/J 


The  Money  of  the  People 


by  W.  H.  Harvey, 

author  of   "Coin's  Financial  School," 
and  Senators  Teller  and  Dubois,  and  Others. 


CHICAGO:  CHARLES  H.  SERGEL  COMPANY. 

SERGEL'S  RAILWAY  LIBRARY,  VOL.  1.  No.  1).    July,  1895. 
ssufnl  Bi-monthly.      Entered  at  Chicago  Postoffice  as  second-clays  matter. 
By  subscription  $1.'>0  a  year 


GIFT   OF 


THE 


MONEY  OF  THE  PEOPLE 


BY  W.  H.  HARVEY 

AUTHOR  OF  « COIN'S  FINANCIAL  SCHOOL" 

OTHERS 


CHICAGO 

CHARLES  H.  SERGKL  COMPANY 
1895 


[FT 


Copyright  18Q6, 

toy 
e»  KL.  Sergei  Company. 


CONTENTS. 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY,  BY  W.  H.  HARVEY,    -  7 

AN  OPEN  LETTER  TO  PRESIDENT  CLEVELAND,  BY 

W.  H.  HARVEY,  17 

SILVER  THE  UNIT  OF  VALUE,  BY  W.  H.  HARVEY,      -        23 

THE  MONEY  OF  THE  CONSTITUTION,  BY  SENATOR 

VOORHEES,  -        29 

SHALL  THE  UNITED  STATES  ATTEMPT  THE  FREE 
COINAGE  OF  SILVER  ALONE,  BY  E.  BENJA- 
MIN ANDREWS,  36 

UNLIMITED   COINAGE  OF  SILVER,  BY  SENATOR 

DUBOIS,      -  46 

SILVER   IN   THE   ORIENT,  BY  SENATOR  H.  M. 

TELLER,  -  61 

FREE  SILVER  AND  DEBT,  BY  CLARENCE  S.  D AR- 
ROW, -  69 

NEED  TO  COIN  SILVER,  BY  F.  H.HE  AD,    -  69 

THE  UNITED  STATES  SHOULD  ADOPT  FREE  COIN- 
AGE INDEPENDENT  OF  OTHER  NATIONS,  BY 
W.  H.  HARVEY,  -  -  76 

APPENDIX— HISTORY  OF  GOLD  AND  SILVER,       -  103 


433245 


PUBLISHERS  NOTE. 


The  articles  in  this  volume  are  reprinted  from 
the  daily  newspapers  of  Chicago.  The  first  essay 
by  Mr.  Harvey  is  from  the  Record,  as  are  the  papers 
by  Senators  Voorhees,  Dubois  and  Teller,  President 
Andrews,  Mr.  Head  and  Mr.  Darrow.  The  second 
and  third  articles  by  Mr.  Harvey  are  reprinted  from 
the  Inter  Ocean,  and  the  last  one  from  the  Tribune. 
The  History  of  Gold  and  Silver,  in  the  appendix,  is 
adapted  from  matter  contained  in  a  book  entitled 
* 'Universal  Bimetallism,"  by  R.  P.  Rothwell. 

Readers  of  this  book  who  are  impressed  by  the 
arguments  in  favor  of  free  coinage  of  silver  should 
read  " Sound  Money,"  by  J.  A.  Fraser,  Jr.,  and 
C.  H.  Sergei,  which  gives  a  complete  answer  to 
those  arguments,  and  exposes  their  fallacies  and 
false  statistics.  "Sound  Money"  will  be  sent  post 
paid  on  receipt  of  twenty-five  cents. 

CHARLES  H.  SERGEL  Co., 

358  Dearborn  St., 

Chicago. 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

By  W.  H.  HARVEY, 

AUTHOR   OF   "COIN'S  FINANCIAL  SCHOOL." 

There  never  was  so  much  misunderstanding  and 
ignorance  among  the  American  people — the  better 
classes — on  any  public  question  as  there  is  and 
has  been  on  this  subject  of  silver.  For  instance: 

Six  months  ago  the  general  impression  among 
the  people  was  that  silver  was  demonetized  because 
it  was  so  plentiful.  Last  summer  the  statement 
was  made  in  more  than  one  metropolitan  paper  in 
this  city  that  silver  "has  become  so  plentiful  it 
has  ceased  to  be  a  precious  metal. "  The  facts 
were  that  the  world's  production  of  gold  in  1873 
(the  year  silver  was  demonetized)  was  $96, 200, 000, 
and  the  world's  production  of  silver  was  $81,800,- 
000  (less  silver  than  gold);  1874,  gold  $90, 700, 000, 
silver  $71,500,000  (again  less  silver  than  gold), 
with  the  same  result  for  many  years  following,  viz. , 
an  under  production  of  silver  as  compared  with  gold. 

In  the  last  few  years  by  ( 'statistics  produced  at 
Washington"  the  world's  production  of  silver  has 
been  greater  than  that  of  gold,  and  yet  there  has 
only  been  all  told  for  the  last  21  years  8  per  cent, 
over-production  of  silver  over  gold  in  coinage  prices. 


8  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

THE    BATTLE   AGAINST   PREJUDICE. 

Those  believing  in  the  restoration  of  silver  (the 
people's  money)  recently  assumed  the  aggressive, 
and  have  since  then  been  driving  the  gold-standard 
men  from  one  false  position  to  another. 

In  the  meantime,  however,  much  prejudice  has 
been  aroused  among  otherwise  patriotic  men  against 
the  advocates  of  a  sound  bi-metallic  currency. 
This  prejudice  is  to  be  accounted  for  by  reason  of 
such  men  having  been  led  astray  by  misinform  ation 
and  supposed  facts  that  they  accepted  as  truths. 

It  would  be  amusing  were  it  not  fraught  with 
peril  to  the  country,  to  see  how  the  other  side 
straddles,  prevaricates  and  jumps  from  one  position 
to  another.  All  this  is  made  possible  by  reason  of 
'  the  question  having  been  regarded  by  the  people  as 
obscure.  But  the  United  States  is  now  a  big  school 
room;  the  people  are  studying  this  subject,  and 
they  are  going  to  get  at  the  facts,  and  they  are  go- 
ing to  hold  responsible  the  men  whom  they  find 
have  deceived  them. 

A  GREAT  NATION'S  INDEPENDENCE. 

They  are  going  to  find  out  another  thing: 

It  is,  that  we  are  financially  independent  of 
Europe.  Our  forefathers  sought  to  erect  a  govern- 
ment here  that  would  be  free  from  the  class  legis- 
lation of  governments  that  we  justly  term  plutoc- 
racies. Over  there  the  many  are  the  slaves  of  the 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  9 

few  who  rob  them  by  legislation.  We  had  expect- 
ed to  be  free  of  that  here.  It  is  now  claimed  that 
we  are  perforce  compelled  to  adopt  and  maintain 
the  financial  legislation  of  Europe,  the  worse  form 
of  class  legislation  that  was  ever  intended  to  enslave 
a  free  people.  There  is  no  such  a  thing  as  an  in- 
ternational money.  The  biggest  business  we  ever 
did  with  Europe  was  at  a  time  when  they  had  one 
thing  for  money  and  we  had  another — 1862  to  1870. 
Balancies  with  foreign  countries  are  settled  in  the 
metals  by  weight  at  their  commercial  value.  Bars 
of  the  metal  are  principally  used.  Four  per  cent, 
of  the  business  of  the  United  States  is  foreign,  and 
96  per  cent  is  domestic.  What  we  want  is  a  money 
adapted  to  the  96  per  cent. 

What  the  people  need  now  is  education.  Parti- 
sanism  must  be  thrown  aside.  Let  it  be  country 
first,  with  a  desire  for  intelligent  and  patriotic  so- 
lution. What  we  want  is  a  sufficient  quantity  of 
primary  or  redemption  money  on  which  to  transact 
the  business  of  this  country,,  and  we  want  to  free 
it  as  nearly  as  possible  from  all  influences  that  tend 
to  its  being  hoarded  and  embarrassed  as  a  measure 
of  values  and  a  medium  of  exchange. 

DRIVEN    TO    THE    GOLD    STANDARD. 

The  campaign  is  now  on,  and  we  are  driving 
these  men  who  have  wrecked  this  country  to  the 
position  they  have  intended  all  along  to  occupy — 


10 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 


the  English  gold-standard  policy.  They  have  for 
21  years  cheated  and  deceived  the  people  by  stating 
things  to  be  facts  which  were  not  facts;  by  con- 
trolling and  wording  the  platforms  of  political  par- 
ties that  promised  the  restoration  of  silver,  and  by 
asking  the  people  to  wait  for  an  international  agree- 
ment. Now  comes  Mr.  William  C.  Cornwell,  presi- 
dent of  the  New  York  State  Bankers'  Association, 
who,  speaking  for  his  side  of  'this  question,  in  an 
address  to  the  bankers  of  Chicago,  says: 

"It  is  time  to  tear  off  disguise.  International  bi- 
metallism is  a  traitor  in  the  camp.  It  is  a  false  fraud. 
It  can  never  be  accomplished.  It  is  a  'will  o'  the  wisp' 
dancing  above  the  deadly  marsh.  It  is  as  illusive  as 
a  dream  of  magic,  as  idle  as  the  pursuit  of  perpetual 
motion,  as  dangerous  as  the  delirium  of  fiat  money." 

He  admits,  what  the  wise  have  all  along  known, 
that  they  were  masquerading  in  disguise.  That 
they  have  been  leading  the  people  for  the  last  21 
years  by  fraudulent  practices.  That  they  have 
thus  far  won  by  disguise.  He  now  thinks  it  is 
time  to  throw  that  "disguise"  off  and  stand  out  in 
the  open  and  fight  for  a  single  gold  standard,  what 
they  have  intended  to  do  through  all  these  years  of 
shambling  and  miserable  deception. 

His  speech  was  loudly  applauded. 

And  again  he  says: 

"If,  in  1875,  1876,  1877  and  1878,  the  bankers  and 
sound-money  men  had  been  organized  as  they  are  organ- 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  11 

ized  now,  and  had  spoken  out  as  they  are  speaking  out 
now,  had  started  on  a  campaign  of  education  as  they  are 
starting  out  now,  the  greenback  would  long  ago  have 
been  wiped  out,  the  silver  lunacy,  before  it  had  wrought 
incalculable  damage,  would  have  been  confined  to  the 
asylums,  where  it  belongs." 

And  they  are  organized,  are  they?  We  knew 
it,  but  thanks  for  this  blast  upon  his  horn  that 
will  assist  in  awakening  the  people. 

The  question  now  is :  Shall  it  be  an  English 
policy  or  an  American  policy? 

A   CHOICE    OF   POLICIES. 

These  men  are  seeking  to  rivet  upon  us  the 
gold  policy  of  England,  with  nothing  but  gold  to 
be  the  primary  money  of  this  country.  They  have 
by  their  gold  policy  got  us  in  debt  to  England  to 
an  amount  that  requires  over  $200,000,000  in  in- 
terest to  be  paid  annually  in  gold,  to  pay  which  all 
our  balance  of  trade  is  consumed;  all  our  annual 
gold  production  (about  $40,000,000)  and  our  sur- 
plus stock  of  gold  is  being  drawn  on  for  the  defici- 
ency. Their  policy  has  driven  the  administration 
to  go  to  the  pawn-brokers  of  England  to  get  gold 
to  sustain  this  great  government,  and  this  is  the 
system  these  men  have  organized  to  fasten  perpetu- 
ally on  this  country.  Why  do  they  take  such  an 
active  interest?  It  is  because  it  promotes  their 
selfish  interests.  If  Andrew  Jackson  were  alive 
and  president  this  policy  would  be  suddenly  re- 


12 


THE  PEOPLED  MONEY. 


versed  and  every  American  heart  would  beat  with 
responsive  pride. 

WHY   WAS    SILVER    DEMONETIZED? 

"Why,"  you  ask  them,  "was  silver  demonetized 
in  1873?" 

"Because,"  they  now  answer,  "it  was  at  a 
premium  over  gold  of  2  per  cent,  and  it  had  gone 
out  of  circulation." 

"Where  did  it  go?"  you  ask. 

"To  Europe,"  they  reply,  "where  the  bullion 
in  a  silver  dollar  was  worth  $1.02  as  measured  in 
gold." 

When  you  answer  this  that  "the  United  States 
produced  about  $35,000,000  of  silver  in  1873  at 
coinage  prices,"  and  ask:  "What  objection  is  there 
to  settling  our  foreign  balance  with  silver  at  2  per 
cent,  premium  instead  of  50  per  cent,  discount  as 
now?"  they  say  it  is  not  bimetallism  unless  the  two 
metals  stay  at  the  exact  parity  of  16  to  1. 

These  men  do  not  know  what  bimetallism  is.  It 
may  be  desirable  to  let  one  metal  go  as  it  would  be 
now.  With  both  as  primary  money  we  have  bi- 
metallism and  bimetallic  prices,  whether  one  metal 
has  a  tendency  to  leave  us  more  than  the  other  or 
not.  And  if  desirable  to  stop  its  leaving  a  change 
in  the  ratio  will  do  it,  and  if  necessary  can  do  it 
so  as  to  set  the  other  metal  going.  So  that  we  can 
feed  Europe  either  metal  we  may  choose. 


THE  PEOPLED  MONEY.  13 

SOME  SAMPLE  GOLD  ARGUMENTS. 

Here  is  a  sample  of  astute  arguments  running 
through  the  minds  of  metropolitan  editors : 

1  'Silver  never  was  the  unit,  as  was  claimed  for 
it,  and  one  of  the  best  evidences  of  it  is  that  so 
little  importance  was  attached  to  it  that  only 
8,000,000  of  these  silver  dollars  were  coined  prior 
to  1873." 

Show  him  the  act  of  1873  making  gold  the  unit 
and  ask  him  '  'How  many  gold  dollars  have  been 
coined  since  then,  if  the  number  coined  is  any  evi- 
dence of  the  law  fixing  the  unit?  "  and  if  he  is  an 
intelligent  editor  and  speaks  his  mind  he  will  tell 
you  that  he  is  hired  to  write  editorials  on  a  subject 
he  knows  nothing  about  or  does  not  believe  in,  or  that 
cold,  calculating  capital  sets  the  policy  of  the  paper. 

The  fact  is  that  less  than  half  a  million  dollars 
in  one  dollar  gold  coins  have  been  coined  since 
1873,  and  those  have  been  found  impracticable  and 
have  gone  out  of  circulation,  and  by  an  act  of 
September  26,  1890,  their  further  coinage  is 
prohibited. 

They  will  tell  you  that  Mr.  Jefferson  stopped 
the  coinage  of  silver  dollars  for  thirty-four  years, 
but  at  the  same  time  will  conceal  from  you  the  fact 
that  between  1792  and  1840  there  was  twice  as 
many  dollars'  worth  of  silver  coined  as  there  was 
gold  coined,  and  that  the  mints  were  open  to  the 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

free  and  unlimited  coinage  of  both  metals,  and 
both  were  full  legal  tender  in  the  payment  of  all 
debts. 

FREE  GOLD  AND  FREE  SILVER. 

They  will  tell  you  that  the  "free-silver"  men 
are  in  favor  of  silver  monometallism.  And  this 
by  a  great  many  people  is  believed. 

This  misconception  arises  from  the  reason  that 
we  are  trying  to  restore  silver — to  give  it  free  and 
unlimited  coinage — the  position  it  once  occupied. 
It  seems  that  many  people  do  hot  understand  that 
gold  now  has,  as  it  has  always  had,  feee  and  un- 
limited coinage.  So,  that  in  trying  to  restore  sil- 
ver we  use  the  term  "free  silver,"  but  we  are  no 
less  in  favor  of  "free  gold."  We  are  bimetallists, 
believing  in  the  free  coinage  of  both  metals. 

The  fifty-cent  silver  dollar  delusion  has  probably 
deceived  more  people  than  any  one  fallacy  con- 
nected with  this  subject.  But  it  will  not  deceive 
them  much  longer.  We  have  literature  among  the 
people  that  makes  this  so  plain  that  even  the 
schoolboys  can  understand  it.  It  will  soon  be  a 
delusion  no  longer.  If  gold  had  been  demonetized 
and  the  mints  closed  to  its  free  and  unlimited  coin- 
age and  the  work  of  redemption  money  thrown  en- 
tirely on  silver  by  the  same  nations,  we  would  have 
had  fif ty-cent  gold  dollars  as  measured  in  silver, 
just  as  we  now  have  fifty-cent  silver  dollars  as 
measured  in  gold. 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  15 

WHAT    OF   THE    OWNERS  OF    BULLION? 

They  say  that  the  silver-bullion  owners  are 
making  this  fight  for  silver.  What  about  the  gold- 
bullion  owners  whose  metal  is  favored?  But  it  is 
not  true.  No  man  stands  in  a  position  to  know 
this  better  than  I  do.  The  silver-bullion  owners 
are  doing  nothing  to  assist  in  this  fight,  and  are 
giving  no  financial  assistance.  This  is  a  question  of 
adopting  suitable  property  for  use  as  money  irre- 
spective of  who  owns  the  property  or  who  may  dig 
it  out  of  the  ground.  I  would  a  thousand  times 
rather,  however,  benefit  one  section  of  my  country 
audits  people  than  cater  to  the  interest  of  Eng- 
land, whose  gold  is  so  dear,  and  to  get  which  we  are 
giving  up  our  property  at  a  sacrifice  and  adopting 
a  method  that  will  bring  national  bankruptcy. 

LET    EVERY    MAN    STUDY    FOR   HIMSELF. 

I  advise  the  people  to  take  no  one's  word  for 
the  facts  in  this  national  controversy,  and  to  send 
to  Washington  for  the  following  books  and  docu- 
ments : 

1.  A   copy   of   the   currency   laws.     If   they 
send  you  a  copy  that  leaves  out  part  of  the  sections 
in  the  act  of  1873  write  back  for  a  full  copy  of 
that  act. 

2.  The  statistical  abstract. 

3.  The  report  of  the  currency  laws  and  other 
information  revised  to  August  1,  1874. 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

4.  A  copy  of  the  report  of  the  monetary  com- 
mission of  1876. 

5.  A  copy  of  the  report  of  the  monetary  con- 
ference of  1878. 

THE  MOMENTOUS  STRUGGLE. 

The  welfare  and  happiness  of  the  people — the 
masses — the  common  people — are  now  at  stake  in 
the  most  momentous  political  struggle  that  has 
ever  risen  in  America,  and  it  will  be  fought  on  the 
side  of  the  gold  power  with  all  the  fierceness  and 
viciousness  that  has  ever  characterized  greed  and 
selfishness.  The  people  must  be  firm.  That  brav- 
ery inspired  by  manhood  and  patriotism  must  nerve 
them  to  stand  as  a  stone  wall  against  these  pirates 
of  commerce  who  have  no  remedy  to  offer  except 
the  terrible  experience  of  the  past. 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  17 


AN  OPEN  LETTER  TO  PRESIDENT  CLEVELAND. 

By   W.  H.  HARVEY, 

AUTHOR  OF   "  COIN'S  FINANCIAL    SCHOOL." 

CHICAGO,  April  15 — To  His  Excellency,  Grover 
Cleveland,  President,  Washington,  D.  C. — Dear 
Sir:  In  reply  to  your  letter  addressed  to  a  com- 
mittee of  business  men  of  this  city  we  wish  to  say 
that  the  committee  that  waited  on  you  and  the 
persons  who  attached  their  names  to  the  invita- 
tion such  committee  presented  did  not  represent  a 
majority  of  the  business  men  and  citizens  of  this 
city,  who  take  a  deep  interest  in  the  welfare  of 
this  republic.  They  represented  that  class  that 
owns  money  and  securities  payable  in  money — fixed 
incomes. 

We  respectfully  submit  that  your  letter  does 
not  present  the  true  merits  of  this  controversy. 
You  call  the  attention  of  farmers  and  wage- 
earners  to  the  fact  that  rising  prices,  while  en- 
abling them  to  sell  their  products  and  labor  at  a 
higher  price,  will  also  cause  them  to  pay  equally 
more  for  what  they  may  purchase,  but  you  neglect 
to  say  that  your  statement  is  not  applicable  to  debts. 
With  prices  coming  down  regularly  and  steadily 
since  the  demonetization  of  silver,  our  merchants, 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

manufacturers,  and  the  people  generally  have  been 
doing  business  on  a  falling  market,  so  that  the  time 
intervening  between  the  purchase  of  their  mer- 
chandise or  raw  material  and  placing  it  months 
after  on  the  market  has  removed  the  margin  they 
would  have  otherwise  made.  This  shrinkage  in 
value,  added  to  the  ordinary  risk  and  expense  of 
business,  has  led  to  an  ever-increasing  volume  of 
debt — to  a  money-lending  period — until  it  has  in- 
creased, all  toldr  public  and  private,  to  about  forty 
billions  of  dollars,  or  about  two-thirds  of  the  total 
value  of  all  the  property  in  the  United  States. 

DEBT-PAYING    POWER   OF     COMMODITIES. 

Money  and  those  debts  payable  in  money  have 
been  steadily  increasing  in  exchangeable  value  with 
the  property  of  the  people.  A  debt  for  $1,000 
that  1,000  bushels  of  wheat  would  have  paid  ten 
years  ago  now  requires  the  farmer  to  give  2,000 
bushels  of  wheat  in  exchange  for  these  dollars  with 
which  to  pay  the  same  debt.  The  debts  now  in  ex- 
istence are  principally  old  debts,  or  renewed  or  re- 
funded debts,  or  new  debts  contracted  to  pay  old 
debts,  or  debts  the  people  have  been  forced  to  con- 
tract by  reason  of  the  continued  decline  in  prices. 
The  owners  of  products  must  now  give  up  twice  as 
much  property  to  pay  their  taxes  as  in  1873. 
Seventeen  thousand  bushels  of  wheat  would  have 
paid  the  President's  salary  of  $25,000  in  1873,  and 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  19 

it  now  requires  100,000  bushels  of  wheat  to  pay 
your  annual  salary  of  $50,000. 

Taxes  have  increased  as  expressed  in  dollars, 
and  have  doubled  and  quadrupled  as  measured  in 
the  property  the  people  surrender  with  which  to 
pay  it  since  1873.  We  have  constantly  pointed 
the  people  to  the  ever-increasing  exchangeable  value 
of  the  creditors'  dollar,  and  to  the  reason  why  it 
was  increased,  but  the  influence  of  these  creditors 
has  dominated  your  administration,  and  you  insist 
on  such  a  currency  as  they  have  established  as  a 
sound  currency.  It  means  the  confiscation  of  the 
property  of  the  people  by  the  sale  of  property 
under  mortgages,  judgments,  and  executions.  It 
means  that  fixed  incomes  will  wipe  out  the  interest 
of  stockholders  in  our  railways  and  corporations. 

If  it  is  an  injustice  to  restore  prices  so  that 
people  can  exchange  their  property  for  a  sufficient 
number  of  dollars  to  pay  their  debts  and  bring 
happiness  and  prosperity  to  our  land,  then  it  was  a 
greater  injustice  to  destroy  the  value  of  property 
and  enhance  the  value  of  money  by  demonetization 
of  silver  and  the  establishment  of  a  single  gold 
standard. 

WHAT   WILL    THE    POLICY   LEAD   TO? 

So  that  when  you  call  the  attention  of  the 
farmer  and  wage-earner  to  the  fact  that  rising 
prices  will  make  him  pay  more  for  what  he  buys 


20  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

you  should  at  the  same  time  call  his  attention  to 
the  fact  that  it  would  enable  him  to  pay  his  debt, 
free  him  from  a  bondage  in  which  he  has  been  un- 
justly placed,  and  again  make  him  the  owner  of  a 
home  and  a  free  and  independent  citizen.  We 
might  say  further  to  him,  that  rising  prices  cause 
money  to  seek  investment  and  would  thus  open  up 
the  channels  of  commerce  and  trade,  and  give  em- 
ployment to  millions  now  idle.  It  is  not  more 
money  that  we  want  to  borrow,  but  to  pay  off  what 
we  already  owe.  The  more  we  borrow  the  more  we 
must  pay,  and  the  annual  interest  on  all  other  public 
and  private  debts  is  now  more  than  the  annual  profits 
of  business  and  production.  Where  will  it  end? 

Our  forefathers  fled  from  Europe  and  estab- 
lished a  government  so  that  they  might  be  free  from 
the  class  legislation  of  those  nations  where  the 
masses  are  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water 
for  the  rich  and  few  who  control  the  law-making 
power,  countries  that  we  justly  term  plutocracies, 
and  yet  it  is  now  being  seriously  insisted  upon  that 
we  must  adopt  and  continue  the  most  pernicious 
class  legislation  that  the  monarchies  of  Europe  have 
ever  fostered  upon  their  helpless  people.  By  adopt- 
ing their  policy  we  have  increased  the  demand  for 
gold  and  its  exchangeable  value,  and  of  money 
based  thereon,  with  all  other  property.  We  have 
aided  them  in  the  adoption  of  a  single  metal  for 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  21 

primary  money  that  they  can  control  and  corner — 
that  they  have  cornered — and  forced  you  to  go  to 
them  to  get  it  at  their  own  price,  to  sustain  the 
credit  of  this  great  arid  resourceful  Nation.  We 
submit  that  this  policy  should  be  abandoned,  and 
our  mints  again  thrown  open  to  silver  (as  they  are 
now  to  gold)  and  our  stock  of  primary  money  in- 
creased thereby. 

TRULY    TIME    FOR   THE    PEOPLE    TO    REASON. 

The  gentlemen  who  visited  you  and  who  peti- 
tioned you  represent  only  one  class  of  our  people. 
We  respectfully  submit  that  it  was  the  intention  of 
the  founders  of  this  government  that  it  was  safer 
that  all  the  people  should  do  the  thinking  for  it, 
than  any  one  class  should  do  it  for  them.  Selfish 
interests  predominate  to  promote  selfish  interest 
when  one  class  does  the  thinking  for  all.  Broad 
views  to  justly  promote  the  common  welfare  can 
best  be  secured  by  a  census  of  the  views  of  all  the 
people. 

We  agree  with  you  that  it  is  time  for  the  people 
to  reason  together,  and  to  that  end  we  respectfully 
ask  that  you  make  it  possible  for  them  to  get  printed 
copies  of  the  act  of  1792,  on  which  our  forefathers 
based  our  financial  system  and  all  subsequent  acts, 
together  with  the  act  of  1873  that  reversed  the 
former  policy  and  acts  subsequent  thereto,  as  well 
as  all  statistical  and  other  information  of  an  official 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

nature  at  Washington  bearing  thereon.  We  but 
express  your  own  opinion  as  President  of  the  people 
when  we  say  that  all  the  people  should  have  the 
opportunity  to  investigate  and  intelligently  pass 
upon  this  question.  Respectfully, 

W.  H.  HARVEY, 
Chairman  Bimetallic  Executive  Committee. 


C"™ ""*^8y^LfiB^^"~*  "*" 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  23 

SILVER  THE  UNIT  OF  VALUE. 

By  W.  H.  HARVEY, 

AUTHOR  OF   "COIN'S  FINANCIAL  SCHOOL." 

Chicago,  April  24. — In  this  morning's  Times- 
Herald  appears  an  editorial  attack  on  the  first 
chapter  in  'Coin's  Financial  School/  in  which  the 
impression  is  intended  to  be  conveyed  that  the 
financial  law  adopted  in  1792  by  the  United  States 
Congress  did  not  fix  the  unit  on  silver,  but  did  fix 
it  on  gold.  The  Times-Herald  is  wrong  and  the 
book  is  right.  My  quarrel  with  the  Times-Herald 
is  that  it  does  not  state  the  proposition  or  the  au- 
thorities fairly,  and  draws  conclusions  which  will 
not  bear  investigation  for  a  moment.  The  sub- 
stance of  the  discussion  that  led  up  to  the  fixing  of 
the  unit  may  be  found  in  the  state  papers  of  that 
period,  the  principal  ones  of  which  may  be  found 
in  the  report  of  the  international  monetary  confer- 
ence of  1878,  and  consists  of  the  following  docu- 
ments : 

"1.  Mr.  Jefferson's  notes  on  the  establishment  of  a 
money  unit  and  of  a  coinage  for  the  United  States. 

"2.    Eeport  of  a  grand  committee  on  the  money  unit. 

"3.  The  coinage  system  proposed  to  Congress  April  8, 
1786,  by  Samuel  Osgood  and  Walter  Livingston,  who 
constituted  the  Board  of  Treasury. 


24  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

"4.    The  resolutions  on  coinage  of  August  8,  1786. 
"5.    Report  of  Alexander  Hamilton  on  the  establish- 
ment of  a  mint. 

"6.    Miscellaneous  documents." 

From  these  you  will  see  that  Mr.  Jefferson,  on 
page  438,  advises  the  following  coins: 

"1.  A  golden  piece  equal  in  value  to  $10. 

"2.  The  unit  or  dollar  itself  of  silver. 

"3.  The  tenth  of  a  dollar  of  silver  also. 

"4.  The  hundredth  of  a  dollar  of  copper." 

The  above  is  his  exact  language.  Further  on 
Mr.  Jefferson  says: 

WHY  THE  DOLLAR  WAS  CHOSEN. 

"The  unit  or  dollar  is  a  known  coin,  and  the  most  fa- 
miliar of  all  to  the  mind  of  the  people.  It  is  already 
adopted  from  South  to  North,  has  identified  our  cur- 
rency, and  therefore  happily  offers  itself  as  a  unit  already 
introduced.  Our  public  debt,  our  requisitions  and  their 
apportionments,  have  given  it  actual  and  long  possession 
of  the  place  of  unit.  The  course  of  our  commerce,  too, 
will  bring  us  more  of  this  than  any  other  foreign  coin, 
and  therefore  renders  it  more  worthy  of  attention." 

Further  on  he  says : 

"If  we  determine  that  a  dollar  shall  be  our  unit,  we 
must  then  say  with  precision  what  a  dollar  is." 

And  then  again,  on  page  442,  he  says: 

"The  quantity  of  fine  silver  which  shall  constitute 
the  unit  being  settled,  and  the  proportion  of  the  value  of 
gold  to  that  of  silver,  a  table  should  be  formed  from  the 
assay  before  suggested,  classing  the  several  foreign  coing 
according  to  their  fineness." 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  25 

And  again,  on  page  443,  he  recommends  that 
a  committee  be  appointed: 

"To  prepare  an  ordinance  for  establishing  the  unit  of 
money  within  these  States;  for  subdividing  it  and  for 
striking  coins  of  gold,  silver  and  copper  on  the  following 
principles : 

"That  the  money  unit  of  these  States  shall  be  equal  in 
value  to  the  Spanish  milled  dollar,  containing  so  much 
fine  silver  as  the  assay  before  directed  shall  show  to  be 
contained  on  an  average  in  dollars  of  the  several  dates 
circulating  with  us. 

"That  this  unit  shall  be  divided  into  tenths  and  hun- 
dredths." 

In  the  report  of  the  grand  committee  on  the 
money  unit  that  fixed  the  silver  dollar  as  the  unit 
we  find,  on  page  447,  the  following: 

"The  quantity  of  pure  silver  being  fixed  that  is  to 
be  in  the  unit  or  dollar,  and  the  relation  between  silver 
and  gold  being  fixed,  all  the  other  weights  must  follow." 

On  page  449  we  find  the  following: 

"On  the  8th  of  April,  1786,  the  Board  of  Treasury  di- 
rected to  the  President  of  Congress  their  report  on 
certain  principles  for  establishing  a  mint,  accompanied 
by  a  letter  to  the  President  of  Congress.  The  report  was 
in  triplicate,  and  contained,  as  will  be  seen  below,  three 
distinct  schemes,  each  of  which  was  set  forth  in  the 
report  with  great  particularity.  *  *  *  Each  of  these 
reports  proposed  a  silver  dollar  as  the  unit." 

ALEXANDER    HAMILTON'S   VIEW. 

The  opposite  view  of  the  question  was  pre- 
sented by  Alexander  Hamilton,  and  his  report  is  in 


26  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

the  book  referred  to  and  now  before  me  with  the 
other  documents  above  referred  to.  On  page  456 
he  says: 

"But  if  the  dollar  should,  notwithstanding,  be  sup- 
posed to  have  the  best  title  to  being  considered  as  the 
present  unit  in  the  coins,  it  would  remain  to  determine 
what  kind  of  dollar  ought  to  be  understood;  or,  in  other 
words,  what  precise  quantity  of  fine  silver." 

On  page  458  he  again  says: 

'The  next  inquiry  toward  a  right  determination  of 
what  ought  to  be  the  future  money  unit  of  the  United 
States  turns  upon  these  questions:  Whether  it  ought  to 
be  peculiarly  attached  to  either  of  the  metals  in  prefer- 
ence to  the  other  or  not;  and  if  to  either,  to  which  of 
them." 

On  page  479  Mr.  Hamilton  recapitulates  and 
advises  as  follows: 

"One  gold  piece  equal  in  weight  and  value  to  ten 
units  or  dollars. 

"One  gold  piece  equal  to  a  tenth  part  of  the  former, 
and  which  shall  be  a  unit  or  dollar. 

"One  silver  piece  which  shall  also  be  a  unit  or  dollar. 

"One  silver  piece  which  shall  be  in  weight  and  value 
a  tenth  part  of  the  silver  unit  or  dollar." 

Mr.  Jefferson^  at  one  time  came  very  near 
yielding  to  the  arguments  of  Mr.  Hamilton,  but  the 
whole  matter  went  into  the  American  Congress  at 
its  first  session,  and  out  of  the  recommendation  and 
discussions  that  had  been  had,  the  result  was  the 
enactment  of  the  law  of  1792,  and  section  9  of  that 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  27 

act  is  the  one  that  settled  this  question.     It  is  as 
follows : 

"And  be  it  further  enacted  that  there  shall  be  from 
time  to  time  struck  and  coined  at  the  said  mint,  coins  of 
gold,  silver  and  copper,  of  the  following  denominations, 
values,  and  descriptions,  viz: 

"Eagles— Each  to  be  of  the  value  of  ten  dollars  or 
units,  and  to  contain  247  J  grains  of  pure,  or  270  grains  of 
standard  gold. 

"Half  Eagles— Each  to  be  of  the  value  of  $5,  and  to 
contain  123|  grains  of  pure,  or  135  grains  of  standard  gold. 

"Quarter  Eagles— Each  to  be  of  the  value  of  $2.50> 
and  to  contain  sixty-one  and  seven-eighths  grains  of  pure, 
or  sixty-seven  and  four-eighths  grains  of  standard  gold. 

"Dollars  or  Units — Each  to  be  of  the  value  of  a  Span- 
ish milled  dollar,  as  the  same  is  now  current,  and  to  con- 
tain 371T\  grains  of  pure,  or  416  grains  of  standard 
silver. 

Half  Dollars— Each  to  be  of  Half  the  value  of  the  dol- 
lar or  unit,  and  to  contain  185}f  grains  of  pure,  or  208 
grains  of  standard  silver. 

"Quarter  Dollars— Each  to  be  of  one-fourth  the  value 
of  the  dollar  or  unit,  and  to  contain  ninety-two  and  thir- 
teen-sixteenths  grains  of  pure,  or  104  grains  of  standard 
silver/ ' 

This  section  closes  by  fixing  the  sizes  of  the 
minor  coins. 

WAS    THE    LAW    TILL    1873. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  unit  was  settled 
on  silver  and  remained  the  law  until  1873,  when  it 
was  changed  to  read  as  follows: 


28  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

"That  the  gold  coins  of  the  United  states  shall  be  a 
one-dollar  piece,  which  at  the  standard  weight  of  25T% 
grains  shall  be  the  unit  of  value." 

The  mints  were  then  closed  to  the  free  and 
unlimited  coinage  of  silver,  and  a  fierce  and  hostile 
"attitude  has  been  assumed  toward  it  since  that 
time.  Thus,  it  will  be  seen  that  in  fixing  the  unit 
originally  the  advice  of  Hamilton  was  rejected  and 
that  of  Jefferson  was  adopted,  and  while  that  was 
the  law  it  was  as  impossible  for  the  silver  in  a  sil- 
ver dollar  to  be  worth  less  than  a  dollar  as  a  bushel 
of  wheat  to  be  less  than  a  bushel.  It  will  be  ob- 
served that  Hamilton's  suggestion  of  two  units,  a 
gold  and  a  silver  unit,  was  not  adopted,  and  Jeffer- 
son's position  was  adopted  of  a  unit  fixed  on  silver 
only.  Jefferson's  plan  contemplated  a  change  in 
the  commercial  ratio  of  the  metal  in  the  two  coins 
with  the  intention  of  changing  the  size  of  the  gold 
coins  if  it  should  occur,  and  this  change  did  occur 
twice  afterward,  and  each  time  the  change  was 
made  in  the  gold  coins. 

While  the  old  law  was  in  existence — 1792  to 
1873 — the  mints  were  open  to  the  free  and  un- 
limited coinage  of  both  metals,  but  with  the  act  of 
1873,  abolishing  the  silver  unit  and  substituting 
the  gold  unitj  the  mints  were  closed  to  silver  and 
left  open  to  gold  alone. 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  29 

THE  MONEY  OF   THE  CONSTITUTION. 

By  SENATOR  VOORHEES. 

I  do  not  regret  the  agitation  of  the  silver  ques- 
tion. Sooner  or  later  it  had  to  be  definitely  settled 
whether  the  labor-producing  people  of  this  country 
can  be  bullied  out  of  one-half  of  their  debt-paying 
money,  or  whether  they  will  stand  up  like  free  men 
and  protect  and  defend  the  money  named  and  pro- 
vided in  the  constitution — gold  and  silver,  or  both 
— not  one  of  the  precious  metals  alone,  but  both, 
and  on  terms  and  conditions  as  to  coinage  and  use 
.of  absolute  equality.  That  is  the  question  im- 
mediately before  us,  and  no  better  time  than  now 
will  ever  be  found  for  its  settlement. 

No  greater  national  question  is,  at  this  time,  in 
the  way  of  a  full,  free,  fair  discussion  of  money, 
currency,  precious  metals,  rations,  standards  of 
values,  units  of  account  and  payment,  and  the 
bearings  all  these  have  on  the  general  welfare  of 
the  great  body  of  the  American  people.  The  silver 
question  itself  is  plainer  to  view  and  less  obscured 
by  the  craft  of  its  enemies  than  at  any  time  since 
the  assassination  of  silver  money  took  place  in  1873. 
There  are  no  legislative  switches  now  in  existence 
to  lead  the  people  away  from  the  main  track.  No 


30  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

cowardly  makeshifts,  or  insincere  shams  can  any 
longer  darken  discussion  or  betray  honest  counsels. 
The  Sherman  act,  which  was  conceived  in  ran- 
corous hostility  to  silver  and  brought  forth  into  law 
by  an  iniquitous  betrayal  of  silver's  free  coinage, 
has  been  buried  in  an  unhonored  grave,  over  which 
no  lament  will  ever  be  heard. 

SPURNS    DICTATION   FROM    ENGLAND. 

I  have  never  been  willing  to  admit  that  our 
system  of  currency  should  be  dictated  by  England 
and  other  foreign  countries,  and  I  repel  that  idea 
now. 

The  real  and  vital  issue  now  presented  to  the 
American  people  is  the  proposed  elimination  of 
silver  from  our  currency,  its  total  overthrow  and 
destruction  as  a  money  metal  and  the  use  of  gold 
alone.  This  is  what  is  now  meant  by  the  move- 
ment against  the  free  coinage  of  silver,,  whatever 
disclaimers  may  be  made  to  the  contrary.  This 
movement  means  the  destruction  of  one-half  of  the 
debt-paying  money  of  the  United  States  and  of  the 
world.  If  it  should  be  successful  it  will  double 
the  burdens  on  every  debtor  and  multiply  the  gains 
and  income  of  every  creditor  wherever  the  sun 
shines. 

The  debts  of  the  American  people  at  this  time, 
both  public  and  private,  are  appalling  in  amount. 
They  have  been  contracted  on  a  bimetallic  basis, 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  31 

and  it  is  now  proposed  to  make  them  payable  on 
the  basis  of  gold  alone.  The  two  metals  also  con- 
stitute the  specie  basis  for  such  paper  currency  as 
may  be  put  in  circulation.  If  silver  money  is  des- 
troyed, paper  circulation  must  be  contracted  in  that 
proportion.  Every  form  and  kind  of  money  must 
become  that  much  scarcer  and  harder  to  get  in  ex- 
change  for  labor  and  the  products  of  labor.  Such 
a  policy  is  to  my  mind  simply  horrible. 

SILVER    SURE    TO     BE    RESTORED. 

I  have  not  a  particle  of  doubt  as  to  the  result 
of  the  contest  now  going  on.  The  enemies  of  silver 
will  be  driven  to  the  wall.  Silver  money  will  not 
only  survive,  but  it  will  be  fully  restored  to  its  old 
place  as  a  leading  and  controlling  factor  ,in  the  de- 
velopment and  the  progress  of  the  country.  Nor 
have  I  any  fear  for  the  future  strength  and  har- 
mony of  the  democratic  party.  Some  men  may 
discard  its  principles  and  abandon  its  organization, 
but  others  will  take  their  places.  I  have  been  in 
favor  of  the  free  coinage  of  silver  at  the  ratio  fixed 
by  Jefferson  all  my  life,  and,  whatever  others  may 
do,  I  shall  hereafter  neither  abandon  my  principles 
nor  my  party. 

I  am  not  unmindful  of  the  vague  cry  now  raised 
about  "sound  money,  honest  money, "  and  it  causes 
me  to  glance  back  over  the  career  of  silver  in 
American  history.  I  discover  that  Washington^ 


32  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

Jefferson,  Hamilton,  Madison,  John  Marshall  and 
Monroe  indorsed  silver  money  as  sound  and  honest, 
and  that  the  same  views  were  entertained  through- 
out the  most  important  epochs  of  our  country's 
trials,  growth  and  glory  by  Jackson,  Clay,  Webster, 
Calhoun,  Silas  Wright,  Marcy,  Horatio  Seymour, 
Benton,  Chase,  Douglas,  Hendricks,  Morton  and 
Abraham  Lincoln. 

The  truth  is  that  danger  from  the  coinage  and 
use  of  silver  as  money  in  this  country  never  oc- 
curred to  a  sane  mind  until  greed,  avarice,  unholy 
speculation  Beared  its  serpent  head  and  aimed  a 
vicious,  deadly  blow  at  the  honored  dollar  of  the 
fathers  in  1873.  Since  that  time  we  have  had 
nothing  but  financial  vexation,  distrust,  business 
depression,  and  ruinous  panics.  The  five  years 
which  immediately  followed  the  demonetization  of 
silver  in  1873  were  freighted  with  more  calamity 
and  suffering  on  the  part  of  laboring  and  producing 
people  than  was  ever  before  known  in  this  continent 
in  its  life  time.  A  wave  of  confiscation  swept  over 
the  country,  annihilating  values,  depriving  labor  of 
its  reward,  destroying  all  market  prices  for  property 
except  such  as  were  bid  at  sheriffs'  sales.  Nor 
did  this  wretched  condition  of  affairs  show  any 
signs  of  improvement  until  the  partial  restora- 
tion of  silver  to  its  money  functions  took  place 
in  1878. 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  33 

HAS    NOBLY     WITHSTOOD    ATTACKS. 

If  I  am  told  on  this  question  that  silver 
bullion  as  a  marketable  commodity  at  this  time  com- 
mands a  low  price,  my  answer  is  that  if  gold  had 
been  conspired  against,  persistently  assailed  by 
foul  means  as  well  as  fair,  stabbed  in  the  dark  and 
in  the  daylight,  and  in  the  back,  and  under  the 
fifth  rib,  and  wherever  else  a  dagger  could  be 
planted  for  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  past,  it 
would  be  in  a  far  worse  crippled  condition  than 
silver.  No  other  form  of  money  on  the  face  of  the 
earth  could  have  withstood  as  silver  has  done,  such 
a  malignant,  unsparing  crusade  as  the  last  twenty- 
two  years  have  witnessed  in  this  country.  It  still 
holds  its  place  in  the  affections  and  confidence  of 
the  people.  Battered,  bruised,  and  tattered  as  it 
has  been,  yet  it  will  buy  today  all  that  gold  will 
buy  and  pay  all  the  debts  that  gold  will  pay,  un- 
less a  special  contract  has  been  made  for  gold. 
The  American  people  will  never  give  up,  and  the 
sooner  the  minions  of  aggressive,  insolent,  con- 
solidated wealth  and  the  arrogant  apostles  of  gold 
monometallism  realize  and  act  upon  this  fact,  the 
better  and  safer  it  will  be  for  them  in  the  future  of 
this  country. 

In  every  State  and  Territory,  from  the  western 
side  of  the  Allegheny  mountains  to  the  Pacific 
coast,  silver  has  been  known  and  indorsed  to  people 


34  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

for  three-quarters  of  a  century,  not  merely  as  sound 
money,  not  merely  as  honest  money,  but  as  land 
office  money  besides.  With  it  their  homes  were 
bought  and  paid  for,  and  not  much  patience  now 
remains  with  them  or  their  descendents  for  those 
who  stand  and  stigmatize  the  great  white  metal 
which  has  done  its  work  so  well . 

The  need  of  the  white  metal  in  the  hands  of  the 
people  is  even  greater  now  than  ever  before.  There 
is  scarcely  a  speck  of  gold  in  sight  of  the  laboring 
classes.  In  round  numbers  there  are  nearly  four 
thousand  millions  of  gold  money  in  the  world  and 
about  the  same  amount  of  silver.  With  silver  de- 
monetized the  plain  people,  the  wage  workers  and 
those  who  raise  and  sell  the  produce  of  the  soil 
will  handle  specie  money  no  more  forever,  and  will 
catch  even  a  glimpse  of  it  but  seldom.  Gold  will 
be  hoarded  and  hid  away  in  the  vaults  of  the  great 
magnates  of  wealth  and  the  people  in  their  business 
will  be  put  on  the  half  rations  of  paper  money  to 
which  the  shrinkage  and  contraction  from  a  basis 
of  bimetallism  to  a  basis  of  monometallism  will  re- 
duce them. 

TIME    HAS    COME    FOR    PLAIN    SPEECH. 

I  wish  to  impugn  the  motives  of  no  one  and  to 
avoid  hard  words  in  discussion  as  far  as  possible, 
but  the  time  has  come  when  speech,  though  tem- 
perate, should  be  very  plain,  Party  platforms  from 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  35 

this  time  forward  will  not  be  framed  to  cheat  on 
this  subject,  whatever  may  have  been  done  hereto- 
fore. No  dubious  phraseology  or  straddling  planks 
on  the  question  of  silver  will  be  tolerated  in  the 
next  national  conventions  that  are  to  take  place  in 
this  country.  Words  will  mean  what  they  say,  and 
men  will  be  nominated  whose  lives  and  records  will 
constitute  a  guaranty  that  the  principles  declared 
will  be  carried  out.  Nor  are  the  people  to  be  im- 
posed on  any  further  by  the  ominous  air  with  which 
the  money  lords  and  money  lenders  prate  about  the 
terrors  and  disasters  of  being  put  on  a  silver  basis 
by  the  free  coinage  of  silver. 

If  the  free  and  unlimited  coinage  of  silver  as 
full  legal  tender  money,  and  as  a  standard  of  values, 
and  the  unit  of  account  and  payment,  without  a 
word  of  international  agreement  on  the  subject, 
will  put  this  country  on  a  silver  basis,  then  we  were 
on  such  a  basis  every  day  and  hour  from  the  pass- 
age of  the  first  coinage  act  in  April,  1792,  until 
the  demonetization  act  of  February,  1873,  a  period 
of  eighty-one  years,  during  which  we  rose  from 
weakness  to  the  foremost  rank  among  the  nations 
of  the  earth.  I  commend  to  all  croakers  in  regard 
to  a  silver  basis,  a  careful  reading  of  the  act  of 
April  2,  1792,  formulated  by  Hamilton  and  Jeffer- 
son and  approved  by  Washington. 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 


SHALL  THE  UNITED  STATES  ATTEMPT  THE 
FREE  COINAGE  OF  SILVER  ALONE  ? 

By  E.  BENJAMIN  ANDREWS, 


PRESIDENT  OP  BROWN  UNIVERSITY. 


I  yield  to  no  man  in  the  United  States  in  the 
sincerity  of  my  desire  to  have  silver  reinstated  in 
its  old  office  as  full  money.  The  evils  which  have 
sprung  from  its  loss  of  this  character  are  not 
usually  exaggerated  in  the  west  or  anywhere.  In 
fact  they  can  hardly  be  exaggerated.  The  question 
is  whether,  in  planning  to  secure  the  rehabilitation 
of  silver,  it  is  best  for  the  United  States  to  proceed 
alone,  irrespective  of  the  acts  and  policy  of  other 
nations,  or  to  wait  a  reasonable  time  longer  in  hope 
of  securing  the  co-operation  of  a  number  of  the 
great  countries  of  Europe. 

For  my  part  I  believe  in  the  latter  policy,  and 
should  deprecate  an  effort  at  the  present  time  on 
the  part  of  the  United  States  alone  to  accomplish 
so  enormous  a  task.  In  saying  this  I  am  fully 
aware  that  many  of  the  ablest  monetary  students  in 
the  world  are  of  opinion  that  the  United  States 
could,  without  any  help  from  other  lands,  resume 
the  free  and  unrestricted  coinage  of  the  white 
metal  without  driving  gold  out  of  the  country  or 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  37 

out  of  circulation.  Henry  Hucks  Gibbs  believes 
this.  So  does  Sir  Guilford  L.  Molesworth.  So 
does  Moreton  Frewen.  There  are  many  of  our  own 
countrymen  who  hold  the  same,  and  that  without 
being,  I  believe,  influenced  in  their  thought  by  any 
selfish  consideration  whatever.  Could  I  only 
believe  with  these  eminent  gentlemen  I  should  be 
as  hearty  as  any  man  in  all  the  West  in  wishing  our 
country  alone,  without  waiting  a  day,  to  take  up 
the  cause  of  silver.  But  I  cannot  possibly  view 
the  matter  as  they  do.  I  am,  on  the  contrary, 
forded  to  agree  with  Prof.  Foxwell,  that  no  nation 
on  earth,  however  great,  can,  after  what  has  passed, 
perform  this  vast  work  single-handed. 

THE  POWER  OF  PREJUDICE. 

The  argument  from  the  success  of  free  coinage 
in  France  between  1803  and  1873,  strong  as  it  is, 
is  not  sufficient  to  convince  me,  seeing  the  whole 
situation,  that  we  could  now  do  what  France  then 
did.  Rightly  or  wrongly — I  believe  wrongly — a 
hostility  toward  silver  exists  which  never  had  place 
during  the  period  named.  This  has  to  be  reckoned 
with.  Foolish,  baseless  and  illogical  as  it  is,  it  is 
a  fact,  in  face  of  which  it  behooves  any  nation  pro- 
posing the  free  use  of  silver  to  plan  its  measures 
with  the  utmost  care.  I  have  been  declaring  right 
and  left  for  years  that  there  is  no  great  supply  of 
silver  above  ground  except  what  is  owned  by  the 


38  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

United  States;  but  my  neighbors  do  not  believe 
this.  Nearly  every  man  I  talk  with  in  the  east 
supposes  that  opening  our  mints  to  silver  would 
mean  a  perfect  deluge  of  silver  dollars  within  a 
month.  A  folly  will  not  down  at  your  bidding, 
and  a  dangerous  opinion  is  no  less  dangerous  for 
being  folly  instead  of  wisdom.  This  sentiment 
against  silver  intensifies  a  rush  and  strife  for  gold 
which  would  be  hard  enough  to  deal  with  in  any 
event. 

All  the  gold  nations  and  all  the  great  banks  in 
them  are  lurking  for  chances  to  stock  up  with  gold. 
This  procedure  is  not  the  usual  provision  of  gold 
for  the  normal  purpose  of  insuring  note  redemption, 
but,  from  a  strictly  economic  point  of  view,  is  en- 
tirely morbid.  The  process,  in  fact,  shows  all  the 
signs  of  vicious  hoarding.  The  motive  of  it  is 
largely  military,  but  even  where  no  such  though*- 
prevails  the  laying  away  of  gold  goes  on  from  con- 
siderations equally  uneconomic  and  unusual.  More 
over,  this  hoarding  bids  fair  to  increase,  not  dimin- 
ish. The  new  output  of  gold  seems  not  to  check  it 
at  all.  Give  the  gold  nations  the  slightest  oppor- 
tunity to  get  away  our  gold  and  they  are  certain  to 
try  it.  They  are  under  a  new  pressure  to  such 
effort — a  pressure  which  has  never  existed  till  re- 
cently. This  pressure  many  of  their  best  people 
regret,  and  a  number  of  the  nations  would  gladly 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  39 

secure  relief  from  it  by  a  general  system  of  bimet- 
allism, but  if  we  go  forward  the  moneyed  classes 
there  who  almost  alone  control  the  press  will  cer- 
tainly seize  the  chance  to  cry  down  silver  still  more, 
frightening  American  gold-holders  to  hide  or  sell 
their  gold,  for  which  Europe  will  then  make  a 
market. 

RISKS  OF  FREE  SILVER  COINAGE. 

It  should  also  be  remarked  that  nations  like 
Austria  and  Kussia,  wishing  to  get  upon  a  hard- 
money  basis,  who  would  gladly  join  in  a  general 
scheme  of  bimetallism  if  a  chance  were  offered, 
must  choose  gold  as  their  basis  if,  and  so  long  as, 
Europe  as  a  whole  continues  upon  this  basis.  And 
they  would  be  likely  to  make  final  their  gold  policy 
the  moment  they  heard  that  we  were  taking  up  sil- 
ver. Japan,  with  a  vast  war  indemnity,  much  of 
it  gold,  might,  perhaps,  strike  into  the  same  line  of 
policy,  making  the  retention  of  gold  by  us  more 
difficult  still.  These  considerations  do  not,  I 
admit,  absolutely  prove  that  free  coinage  by  us 
would  drive  out  gold,  but  is  it  not  clear  that  they 
make  such  a  proceeding  exceedingly  risky?  It 
seems  to  me  altogether  likely,  almost  certain,  that 
gold  would  be  forced  from  us,  and  that  we  should 
be  driven  after  a  time  to  a  financial  basis  much  like 
that  of  Mexico  at  present.  I  say  <  'much  like  that 
of  Mexico,"  instead  of  "just  like  that  of  Mexico," 


40  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

because  it  is  certain  that  the  adoption  of  silver  as 
ultimate  money  by  this  immense  country  would  a 
good  deal  elevate  the  gold  price  of  silver.  Still,  if 
gold  leaves  us,  our  monetary  basis  will,  of  course, 
be  silver,  however  much  value  the  bullion  in  a  sil- 
ver dollar  may  then  have  beyond  what  it  has  at 
present. 

But,  some  will  interject,  what,  suppose  gold 
does  leave  us?  What  harm  would  come  if  we  were 
to  go  over  to  a  silver  basis?  Why  wait  for  other 
nations?  Are  we  not  strong  enough  to  have  a  mon- 
etary policy  of  our  own?  Is  it  not  weak  and  unpat- 
riotic to  postpone  action  until  rival  nations  please 
to  do  what  we  desire,  when  we  have  no  power  to 
influence  their  action?  I  reply  that  it  is  not  weak 
or  unpatriotic  to  do  what  is  best  for  our  country. 
I  would  not  wait  for  other  countries  in  order  to 
please  them  if  we  were  in  the  long  run  to  suffer 
thereby.  The  question  is:  What  is  the  best  on 
the  whole  for  the  people  of  this  United  States?  Is 
it  best  for  us  by  ourselves  to  proceed  freely  to  coin 
silver  so  long  as  there  is  good  hope  that  within  a 
reasonable  time  international  free  coinage  may  be 
brought  about,  making  the  restoration  of  silver 
easy  and  absolutely  safe  for  all?  I  think  not. 

EFFECTS  OF  THE  EXPULSION  OF  GOLD. 

If  we  take  up  the  metal  alone,  and  that  course 
results,  as  I  should  anticipate,  in  the  expulsion  of 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  41 

gold,  we  shall  have  in  the  first  place  a  financial 
crisis  worse  than  any  ever  suffered  in  the  country. 
This  because  we  cannot  in  a  long  time,  even  by 
working  our  mints  day  and  night,  coin  silver 
enough  to  take  the  place  which  would  be  vacated 
by  gold.  Prices  would  sorely  fall.  Immense  num- 
bers of  failures  would  occur.  Laborers  would  be 
thrown  out  of  work.  Altogether  a  dreadful  parox- 
ysm in  our  business  would  be  precipitated.  Slowly 
the  gap  left  by  gold  would  be  filled  by  the  mining 
and  coinage  of  silver.  Prices  would  then  gradually 
rise.  At  last  they  would  become  higher  than  now, 
more  and  more  approaching  the  Mexican  and  Jap- 
anese level.  Some  advantages  would  doubtless 
spring  from  this  elevation  of  prices,  but  it  is  a  mis- 
take to  suppose  that  it  would  redress  the  iniqui- 
ty caused  by  the  fall  of  prices  since  1873,  because 
the  rise  and  the  fall  would  in  the  overwhelming 
majority  of  cases  not  apply  to  the  same  parties. 
In  most  instances  the  very  men  who  have  profited 
by  the  fall  would  manage  to  profit  again  by  the  rise. 
Moreover,  wages  would  rise  more  slowly  than  val- 
ues at  large. 

But  a  consequence  far  worse  than  any  of  these 
would  be  that  our  passage  to  a  silver  basis  would 
erect  against  foreign  exchange  between  Europe  and 
the  United  States  just  such  a  barrier  as  now  exists 
between  Europe  and  Mexico.  It  would  annihilate 


42  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

all  fixed  par  between  New  York  and  London, 
repeating  the  terrible  inconvenience  in  our  Euro- 
pean exchanges  which  we  suffered  in  war  times, 
when  we  were  upon  a  paper  basis.  The  damage 
that  this  order  of  things  would  effect,  it  seems  to 
me,  the  friends  of  national  free  coinage  have  not 
sufficiently  considered.  I  take  it  that  it  would 
work  very  much  like  a  prohibitive  tariff  against 
European  manufacturers  and  in  favor  of  American 

manufacturers. 

* 

MANUFACTURES  AND  FARM  PRODUCE. 

I  can  understand  how  American  manufacturers 
might  wish  such  a  system  to  prevail,  for  it  would 
assure  to  them  the  American  market  far  more  deci- 
sively than  did  the  McKinley  act,  at  the  same  time  en- 
abling them  to  export  to  Europe  lines  of  goods  which 
have  never  yet  crossed  the  Atlantic  in  that  direc- 
tion. This  would  be  possible  because  wages  here 
would  not  rise  so  rapidly  as  would  general  values. 
It  is  one  of  the  anomalies  of  the  silver  controversy 
that  our  manufacturers  nearly  all  oppose  national 
free  coinage,  which  would  give  them  higher  protec- 
tion and  an  immensely  larger  market  than  they  can 
ever  obtain  otherwise. 

But  it  would  certainly  not  be  well  for  the  agri- 
cultural sections  of  the  country  thus  to  be  cut  off 
from  Europe.  Europe  is  the  only  great  outlet  for 
our  agricultural  produce  and  any  diminution  of  the 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  43 

European  market  for  this  produce  must  deleteri- 
ously  affect  the  entire  farming  population  of  our 
land — a  fate  for  which  no  prosperity  of  our  manu- 
facturing classes  could  atone. 

THE  MARKET  Of1  THE  SILVER  COUNTRIES. 

Silver  money,  below  gold  par,  would  indeed 
tend  to  spur  our  agricultural  exportation,  too,  as 
in  Argentina  and  other  paper-money  countries, 
which  send  untold  amounts  of  their  produce  to  Lon- 
don in  spite  of  the  crazy  exchanges.  Still,  supposing 
Europe  on  a  gold  basis  and  the  United  States  on 
a  silver  basis  below  the  gold  par,  American  agri- 
culture cannot  compete  in  Europe  with  that  of 
paper  countries,  because  these  can  cheapen  their 
paper  afresh  whenever  necessary  to  renew  their  ad- 
vantage. This  species  of  advantage  might,  to  be 
sure,  remain  theirs  even  if  Europe  should  adopt 
bimetallism,  but  in  that  case  those  states  would,  in 
all  probability,  soon  bring  their  paper  to  par, 
restoring  to  us  all  those  natural  advantages  as  an 
agricultural  nation  which  the  demonetization  of  sil- 
ver has  so  largely  rendered  inoperative. 

It  will  be  said,  I  know,  that  our  course  in  favor 
of  silver  would  give  us,  as  against  England, 
the  silver  countries'  market,  and  that  England 
would  be  forced  to  follow  us  in  the  use  of  silver  or 
else  renounce  its  position  as  a  manufacturer  for 
the  world.  Should  we  take  up  silver  this  pressure 


44 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 


would  indeed  be  brought  to  bear  upon  England. 
It  would  be  severe,  too,  and  I  think  that  it  would, 
as  stated,  ultimately  drive  England  to  adopt  silver. 
But  that  this  result  would  come  in  any  very  near 
future  is  most  unlikely.  To  see  this  one  needs 
onl}r  to  reflect  upon  England's  slowness  in  becoming 
aware  that  there  is  a  silver  question  at  all.  The 
degradation  of  silver  has  cost  Great  Britain  billions 
of  pounds  sterling  already ;  but  the  classes  there 
who  profit  from  the  appreciation  of  gold  have  till 
within  a  few  months  been  able  so  to  control  opinion 
as  to  make  those  wishing  monetary  reform  appear 
to  the  public  to  be  simply  cranks  and  weak-minded. 
There  is  no  knowing  what  years  it  might  require 
for  the  competition  of  America  with  England  in 
Japan,  China  and  South  America  to  bring  England 
to  join  us  in  the  use  of  silver. 

BAD   EFFECT   OF    INDEPENDENT    ACTION. 

The  problem  for  this  country  would  be  very 
different  if  there  were  no  hope  of  steps  in  the  right 
direction  by  Europe  within  a  short  time.  But, 
spite  of  all  that  our  gold  papers  continually  say  to 
the  contrary,  such  hope  is  bright;  and  it  will  grow 
brighter  with  the  days  unless  the  attitude  of  power- 
ful bodies  in  this  country  leads  Europeans  again 
to  think  that  we  are  going  to  attempt  alone  the 
solution  of  this  perplexing  problem.  There  is  no 
<loubt  \n  my  mind  that  the  monetary  policy  of 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  45 

Mr.  Cleveland,  usually  thought  adverse  to  silver, 
and  for  aught  I  know  meant  to  be  so,  has  really 
been  one  of  the  principal  causes  awakening  Europe 
to  the  necessity  of  doing  something  for  silver.  So 
long  as  European  governments  thought  that  we 
were  on  the  verge  of  going  to  a  silver  basis  they 
did  nothing,  and  if  they  could  today  be  assured 
that  the  United  States  would  soon  vote  to  espouse 
alone  the  cause  of  silver  money  they  would  at  once 
relapse  into  their  old  apathy.  Whatever  his  motive 
Mr.  Cleveland  has  in  the  way  indicated  done  very 
much  to  forward  the  ultimate  restoration  of  silver. 

Some  will  say  that  we  cannot  afford  to  wait  for 
Europe  any  longer;  that  we  must  act  at  once  and 
by  ourselves.  I  reply  that  we  cannot  have  a  non- 
international  free-coinage  law  during  the  next  two 
years,  anyway.  No  one  supposes  that  such  a  law 
can  be  passed  without  or  over  Mr.  Cleveland's  veto. 
We  must,  therefore,  wait  these  two  years,  whether 
we  wish  to  or  not. 

Now,  unless  some  very  pronounced  demon- 
stration in  favor  of  domestic  free  coinage  is  made 
in  this  country,  then,  before  these  two  years  shall 
have  elapsed  a  number  of  the  greatest  states  in 
Europe  will  be  ready  to  join  hands  with  us  in  this 
important  cause,  making  its  victory  absolutely 
sure. 


46 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 


UNLIMITED  COINAGE  OF  SILVER. 

By  SENATOR  F.  T.  DTJBOIS. 

It  is  very  evident  to  the  most  casual  and  indif- 
ferent observer  that  the  cause  of  silver  is  gaining 
ground  every  hour-.  This  is  apparent  in  Germany, 
England,  and  all  the  gold-standard  countries  of 
Europe,  as  well  as  in  the  United  States.  The  most 
rapid  progress  and  the  crystallization  of  sentiment 
is  more  marked  in  the  United  States,  to  be  sure. 
The  reasons  for  the  change  of  sentiment  are  easily 
understood.  Distress  and  hard  times  are  general 
throughout  the  world.  There  is  a  prevailing  opinion 
among  producers  and  wage  earners  that  the  era  of 
falling  prices  and  consequent  depression  in  all  lines  of 
trade  has  been  brought  about  by  the  adoption  of  the 
gold  standard  by  the  leading  nations  of  the  world. 
Nothing  is  of  stable  value  now  save  good  gold 
mines  and  gold  money.  There  are  not  many  of  the 
former,  and  the  owners  of  gold  money  as  a  rule  do 
not  live  in  the  United  States. 

THE    APPRECIATION   OF   GOLD. 

The  great  majority  of  the  people  of  this  country 
understand,  I  think,  that  with  gold  as  the  sole 
standard  of  money  that  metal  is  appreciated,  and 
all  things  which  it  measures  in  value  are  depreci- 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  47 

ated.  It  is  boyish  and  unworthy  of  men  who 
undertake  to  direct  public  sentiment  to  say  that 
silver  has  not  been  demonetized.  To  say  that  sil- 
ver is  still  in  use,  and  in  large  quantities,  in  the 
United  States,  and  that  it  is  maintained  on  a  parity 
with  gold  is  a  begging  of  the  entire  monetary  ques- 
tion which  is  entirely  unworthy  of  some  dis- 
tinguished gentlemen  who  have  lately  expressed 
themselves.  There  must  be  basic  money.  On  this 
other  moneys  rest.  There  must  be  a  money  of 
ultimate  redemption  in  order  to  insure  absolutely 
safe  currency.  It  is  a  serious  question  whether 
there  is  or  can  be  enough  of  both  gold  and  silver  to 
supply  this  basic  money.  When  both  were  used, 
prior  to  1873,  they  seemed  to  answer  the  purpose, 
and  remained  at  a  ratio  of  about  15£  ounces  of 
silver  to  1  of  gold.  The  prices  of  labor,  of  wheat, 
cotton,  corn  and  other  products  were  main- 
tained. 

When  silver  (which  comprised  one-half  of  the 
basic  money)  was  demonetized,  when  it  was  no 
longer  recognized  as  the  equal  of  gold  at  the  mints, 
but  was  made  a  commodity  the  same  as  coffee,  it 
fell  in  value  as  compared  with  gold,  until  now  it  is  as 
about  thirty-two  ounces  of  silver  to  one  ounce  of 
gold.  The  significant  fact,  however,  that  wheat 
and  corn  and  cotton  and  the  value  of  all  other  pro- 
ducts, as  well  as  the  price  of  labor,  has  fallen  with 


48  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

silver,  is  what  creates  the  great  demand  for  the  res- 
toration of  silver  as  basic  money. 

TAKING    THE    INITIATIVE. 

I  have  the  greatest  respect  for  many  of  the  able 
silver  advocates  in  the  United  States  who  do  not 
see  their  way  clear  to  unlimited  coinage  by  our 
country  acting  alone.  I  myself  can  not  see  how  we 
are  to  secure  bimetallism  unless  the  United  States 
takes  the  initiative.  England  is  a  creditor  nation. 
The  gold  standard  makes  money  scarce  and  dear. 
This  is  to  the  advantage  of  England,  and  she  will 
not  consent  to  the  addition  of  silver  as  redemption 
money  unless  she  is  compelled  to.  I  have  no  hopes 
of  any  international  agreement  until  after  this  gov- 
ernment adopts  free  coinage.  England  and  the 
other  great  nations  of  Europe  will  then  be  com- 
pelled to  join  us  or  lose  their  commercial  su- 
premacy. 

The  minute  the  United  States  adopts  free  coin- 
age at  the  ratio  15^  or  16  to  1,  the  price  of  silver 
will  be  regulated  throughout  the  world..  No  one 
who  has  given  the  subject  serious  thought,  or  who 
has  any  regard  for  his  reputation  as  a  student  of 
finance,  attempts  to  argue  any  longer  that  the 
restoration  of  silver  by  the  United  States  acting 
independently  would  cause  the  country  to  be  flooded 
with  silver  from  foreign  nations.  This  country 
could  not  be  a  "dumping  ground"  for  silver  for  the 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  49 

simple  reason  that  there  is  no  nation  which  does  not 
absolutely  need  all  the  silver  which  it  has.  There 
is  no  loose  silver  anywhere  to  come  here.  There 
will  be  no  object  in  foreign  countries  sending  silver 
here,  even  if  they  had  it  to  spare,  because  it  would 
be  worth  as  much  in  each  of  the  foreign  countries 
as  here,  and  they  would  lose  by  sending  it  here  what 
the  cost  of  transportation  would  amount  to. 

IF  GOLD  SHOULD  LEAVE  THE  COUNTRY. 

Some  claim  that  with  free  coinage  all  the  gold 
will  leave  this  country.  What  if  it  does?  Where 
will  it  go  to?  Admit  for  the  sake  of  argument  that 
it  will  go  to  England.  The  volume  of  the  money 
in  England  will  increase  to  that  extent,  with  the 
result  that  the  price  of  our  products  which  we  sell 
in  England  will  be  enhanced,  and  England  will  find 
it  impossible  to  retain  the  gold. 

It  has  been  demonstrated  clearly  that  gold  can- 
not be  retained  in  this  country  under  the  present 
condition  of  affairs.  The  government  is  absolutely 
at  the  mercy  of  any  syndicate  of  rich  bankers  who 
desire  to  take  it  out  of  the  treasury.  All  they  have 
to  do  is  to  present  the  various  forms  of  currency 
for  redemption  and  our  gold  reserve  of  $100, 000, 000 
melts  away.  The  experience  in  this  direction  has 
been  so  recent  that  everyone  can  recall  it.  The 
government  has  issued  over  $100,000,000  of  new 
bonds  bearing  interest  in  its  desperate  effort  to 


50  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

maintain  the  gold  reserve  of  $100,000,000.  It 
might  continue  this  operation  and  in  that  way  sup- 
ply the  gold  deficit,  which  is  liable  to  occur  at  any 
moment,  but  these  bonds  with  interest  must  be  paid 
at  some  time.  This  process  of  borrowing  gold  with 
interest-bearing  obligations  cannot  continue  in- 
definitely. 

PROGRAMME   OF   THE     SILVER   MEN. 

•  The  silver  men  in  the  country  are  very  much  in 
earnest.  They  number  a  great  majority  of  the 
people,  and  will,  I  think,  find  a  way  to  make  their 
demands  effective. 

It  looks  to  me  as  though  both  of  the  great 
national  parties  would  declare  for  silver  in  1896. 
In  my  judgment  no  party  can  win  which  endeavors 
to  keep  our  government  fastened  to  the  single  gold 
standard.  If  both  of  the  leading  national  parties 
should  be  controlled  by  the  gold  standard  advo- 
cates, neither  of  them  could  elect  their  candidate. 
An  advocate  of  silver  would  then  be  nominated, 
either  in  the  electoral  college  or  by  a  separate  na- 
tional convention,  and  elected. 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  51 


SILVER  IN  THE  ORIENT. 
By  SENATOR,  H.  M.  TELLER. 

I  like  to  do  all  the  writing  and  talking  possible 
on  the  silver  issue,  for  I  feel  more  than  ever  that 
it  is  a  most  momentous  question,  but  I  cannot  al- 
ways spare  the  time.  I  do  more  of  this  work  than 
I  should.  The  subject  is  so  vast;  it  ramifies  in  so 
many  directions  and  the  arguments  are  so  numerous 
that  it  requires  care  and  thought  to  give  in  a  single 
article  a  single  phase  of  the  subject. 

The  President's  recent  letter  to  Chicago  was  an 
appeal  to  the  supporters  of  the  gold  standard  to 
defend  that  system  by  proclaiming  for  it  the  merit 
of  soundness,  and  to  declare  all  other  systems  un- 
sound, and  the  supporters  of  all  others  advocates 
of  a  debased  currency.  In  his  opinion  I  suppose 
we  are  advocates  of  an  unsound  currency.  It  is  to 
be  regretted  that  the  president  did  not  point  out 
to  us  some  of  the  advantages  of  the  gold  standard 
as  well  as  the  possible  danger  to  the  country  if  we 
return  to  the  use  of  both  gold  and  silver  as  such 
use  existed  in  the  United  States  prior  to  1873. 
THE  WORLD'S  FREE  COINAGE  UP  TO  1873. 

Up  to  that  time  practically  the  whole  world  had 
the  benefit  of  the  use  of  both  silver  and  gold  as 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

money  of  ultimate  redemption.  England  was  on  a 
gold  basis  and  Germany  on  a  silver  basis,  it  is  true, 
but  the  mints  of  France  were  open  to  both  gold  and 
silver,  and  England  had  the  benefits  of  an  open 
mint  for  silver  in  France  but  a  short  distance  from 
England's  commercial  center,  while  Germany  had 
the  French  mint  for  its  gold.  The  Englishman  de- 
siring to  put  his  silver  into  money  could  do  so 
either  by  sending  it  over  to  the  free-coinage  mint 
in  France  or  by  sending  it  to  Germany  and  exchang- 
ing it  there  upon  a  ratio  of  15^  ounces  of  silver 
for  an  ounce  of  gold.  The  German  having  gold 
which  he  wished  changed  into  money  had  but  to 
send  it  to  England  to  be  coined  or  to  France  for 
exchange  into  French  money.  This  was  freely  done 
and  all  the  gold  and  silver  not  required  for  export 
from  Europe  was  coined  into  money  at  some 
European  mint.  The  United  States  mints  were 
open  to  the  coinage  of  both  silver  and  gold  at  a 
ratio  of  a  little  less  than  16  ounces  of  silver  to  1 
of  gold,  which  ratio  we  speak  of  as  16  to  1. 

While  all  the  world  was  not  on  a  bimetallic  basis, 
all  the  world  had  the  advantages  and  benefits  con- 
ferred by  that  system,  for  England,  France,  the 
United  States  and  others  were  ready  to  coin  all  the 
gold  offered,  and  Germany,  France,  the  United  States 
and  other  countries  were  ready  to  coin  all  the 
silver  offered,  and  this  gave  gold  and  silver  bullion 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  53 

a  money  value  equal  at  all  times  to  the  coin  that 
could  be  made  out  of  it.  Then  all  countries  by 
the  system  of  commercial  exchange  had  the  full 
advantage  of  the  bimetallic  coinage. 

MANUFACTORIES   MAY   GO    TO   ASIA. 

Read  history  and  tell  me  where  there  is  anything 
to  justify  the  President  in  supposing  that  a  return 
to  the  conditions  of  finance  existing  prior  to  1873 
would  be  fraught  with  disaster.  The  countries  that 
have  abandoned  the  use  of  silver  have  not  benefi tted 
their  financial  condition,  and  the  financial  condition 
of  the  world  to-day  is  much  less  satisfactory  than  it 
was  for  many  years  preceding  1873.  Exchange  has 
fluctuated  to  a  greater  degree  since  that  year  be- 
tween silver  using  and  gold  using  countries  and  now 
seriously  threatens  to  transfer  the  manufactories  of 
Europe  and  America  to  Asiatic  countries. 

I  will  state  this  as  a  proposition:  If  the  gold 
price  of  silver  falls  in  the  gold-standard  countries 
the  price  of  exports  from  gold-standard  countries 
to  the  silver-standard  countries  must  either  fall  in 
the  country  where  produced  or  rise  in  the  country 
to  which  the  exports  are  sent.  Silver-using  coun- 
tries must  pay  more  silver  for  imports  from  gold- 
standard  countries  or  the  manufacturers  in  gold- 
standard  countries  must  reduce  the  selling  price  of 
their  wares  to  meet  the  decline  in  the  relative  value 
of  silver  to  gold.  That  is  the  situation  presented 


54 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 


the  manufacturers  to-day.  Prior  to  1873  fifteen 
and  one-half  ounces  of  silver  were  equivalent  to 
one  ounce  of  gold.  Then  the  English  exporter  to 
Asia  received  that  amount  of  silver,  knowing  that 
he  ,could  certainly  convert  it  into  gold  without  loss 
upon  the  stable  ratio.  It  did  not  change  by  daily 
market  fluctuations. 

A   STORY   OP   DECLINING    PRICES. 

Now,  mark  the  change.  To-day,  according  to 
the  present  price  of  silver,  it  takes  something  like 
thirty-one  ounces  of  silver  to  secure  by  exchange 
an  ounce  of  gold,  instead  of  fifteen  and  one-half 
ounces,  as  was  the  case  before  1873.  If  the  ex- 
porter should  attempt  to  maintain  his  old  price 
after  silver  was  demonetized,  he  must  require  of 
the  silver-using  purchaser  more  than  the  amount  of 
silver  heretofore  paid  for  his  product,  subject  to  the 
fluctuations  of  silver  based  upon  a  gold  measure, 
which  is  now,  as  you  know,  reduced  to  one-half 
its  former  exchange  value.  What  is  the  result? 
The  silver  buyer  of  the  Englishman's  wares  must 
either  refuse  to  buy,  must  pay  the  increased  silver 
price,  or  must  manufacture  for  himself  in  his  own 
country.  What  did  he  do?  By  a  refusal  to  buy 
he  forced  the  Englishman  to  reduce  his  price.  The 
importer  continues  to  buy  with  his  silver,  but  to 
the  disaster  of  the  English  manufacturer,  who  can 
not  make  a  profit  at  such  reduced  rates, 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  55 

Suppose  the  Englishman  could  not  afford  to 
reduce  his  prices  to  the  full  depreciation  of  silver 
measured  upon  a  gold  standard  he  must  advance  his 
prices  in  exchange  for  the  foreign  importer' s  silver, 
and  then  the  silver-paying  customer  complains  of 
rising  prices.  This  leads  to  the  manufacture  of 
these  articles  in  the  silver-using  countries  where 
the  manufacturer  is  satisfied  to  take  silver  at  its  old 
value,  and  thus  the  market  for  the  gold-standard 
producer  is  destroyed.  That  has  been  the  case  in 
Mexico,  India,  China  and  Japan,  and  doubtless 
more  marked  in  Japan  than  in  any  other  country. 

FUTURE  GREATNESS  OF  JAPAN. 

It  looks  now  as  if  Japan  might  become  the 
great  manufacturing  country  of  the  orient  if  not 
of  the  world.  Its  population  is  quite  as  skillful  in 
manufacturing  as  is  that  of  England.  Japan  has 
the  advantages  of  a  better  climate,  of  cheaper 
labor,  of  an  abundance  of  cheap  iron  and  coal; 
her  products  can  be  sold  in  China  and  India  on  a 
silver  basis  with  profit,  and  even  in  Europe  on  a 
gold  basis  at  a  figure  less  than  any  European 
country  can  manufacture  them.  It  may  be  said 
that  her  manufactures  are  not  sufficiently  perfected 
to  compete  with  the  European  manufactures.  This 
may  be  true  in  many  articles,  but  not  as  to  most 
articles;  and  as  to  those  not  yet  perfected,  the 
patience  and  skill  of  the  Japanese  will  soon  secure 


56  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

for  their  manufactures  the  same  excellence  that 
has  commended  European  manufactured  products 
to  both  European  and  Asiatic  consumers. 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  labor  has  not  fallen 
in  India,  China,  Japan  and  other  silver-standard 
countries,  and  that  one  ounce  of  silver  bullion  will 
buy  as  much  labor  now  as  it  ever  did.  This  is 
true  also  of  all  the  domestic  supplies  and  materials 
required  for  manufacturing  in  silver  countries.  It 
is  also  true  of  taxes  and  general  charges  that  must 
be  met  by  all  manufacturers  alike.  In  Europe, 
however,  and  in  America,  one  ounce  of  silver  bul- 
lion will  buy  only  one-half  as  much  labor  or  sup- 
plies and  will  discharge  only  one-half  as  much 
taxes  and  general  charges.  Under  these  conditions 
it  is  impossible  for  any  European  or  American 
manufacturer  to  compete  with  manufacturers  in 
the  countries  I  have  named.  If  we  persist  in  giving 
the  silver- using  countries  of  the  world  the  advant- 
age which  they  now  possess  by  reason  of  cheap 
silver  we  will  find  that  in  a  few  years  the  manufact- 
uring of  the  world  will  be  in  the  hands  of  the 
Asiatics,  and  they  will  export  to  gold-standard  coun- 
tries their  products,  and  sell  at  prices  quite  impossi- 
ble for  the  gold-standard  manufacturers  to  meet. 

WHY   PRICES    HAVE    FALLEN. 

The  advocates  of  the  gold  standard  tell  us  that 
the  decline  in  prices  is  not  the  result  of  the  disuse 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  57 

of  silver,  but  is  due  to  other  causes  which  they 
are  pleased  to  denominate  as  over-production. 
They  ignore  the  fact  that  the  fall  in  prices  is  only 
in  the  gold-standard  countries.  Countries  having 
the  silver  standard  have  not  suffered  a  fall  in  prices, 
nor  have  they  had  a  rise  in  prices  of  articles  of 
domestic  production.  They  have  had  the  desirable 
condition  of  stable  prices.  The  rise  of  imported 
articles  has  only  stimulated  their  manufactures. 

For  twenty  years  and  more  the  producer  in  this 
country  has  seen  the  price  of  his  product  lessen 
with  each  year.  The  owner  of  houses  and  lands 
outside  of  the  great  cities  has  seen  the  same  steady 
decline  in  the  selling  price  of  his  property.  Whole- 
sale prices  have  especially  fallen,  while  retail  prices 
have  not  fallen  to  the  full  extent  that  wholesale 
prices  have.  Thus  the  consumer  has  not  had  the 
full  benefit  of  cheap  goods  by  the  fall  in  prices  that 
has  pinched  and  destroyed  the  producer.  All  the 
gold-standard  countries  have  had  this  fall  in  prices, 
while  in  the  silver  countries,  as  I  have  stated, 
prices  have  practically  remained  stable.  Now  what 
has  caused  this  steady  decline  in  prices  since  1873? 
It  is  folly  to  say  that  production  has  increased  to 
such  an  extent  as  to  cause  this  great  fall.  Nor  can 
it  truthfully  be  asserted  that  production  has  been 
so  cheapened  by  improved  machinery  and  facilities 
for  manufacturing  that  the  products  can  be  sold  at 


58 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 


such  greatly  reduced  prices.  The  fact  that  pro- 
ducers are  all  complaining  of  the  loss  of  profits  is 
proof  positive  that  in  cheapening  the  cost  of  pro- 
duction prices  can  be  lowered.  The  fact  of  a 
steady  increase  in  population  ought  at  least  to  have 
maintained  the  prices  of  1873. 

WHY   THE    DEMAND    HAS    DECLINED. 

Supply  and  demand  control  prices.  In  fact,  it 
is  demand  alone  that  controls  prices.  The  supply 
will  in  time  meet  the  demand.  The  demand  de- 
pends upon  a  desire  coupled  with  ability  to  possess. 
In  our  present  condition  our  supplies  fall  off  and 
still  prices  fall  because  the  demand  has  fallen  off, 
and  demand  falls  off  because  the  would-be  purchas- 
er has  not  the  financial  ability  to  buy. 


•"""•^^j^B^^pp^"* 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  59 


FREE  SILVER  AND  DEBT. 

By  CLARENCE  S.  DARROW. 

It  would  perhaps  be  impossible  to  determine 
why  gold  and  silver  are  used  for  money.  The  so- 
called  civilized  nations  of  the  earth  in  this^  as  in 
most  other  customs,  followed  the  barbarous  nations, 
which  had  generally  come  to  regard  these  metals 
as  the  best  for  purposes  of  exchange. 

In  ancient  times  they  circulated  as  they  do 
to-day,  because  of  the  intrinsic  value  of  the  coins. 
It  required  a  comparatively  large  amount  of  labor 
to  produce  the  metals ;  they  were  not  found  in  so 
great  a  quantity,  and  therefore  they  were  valuable 
as  compared  with  most  of  the  other  metals  and 
products  of  the  earth.  In  early  days  all  exchange 
was  barter,  and  all  business  was  done  for  cash. 
When  goods  were  sold  an  equivalent  was  given. 
It  was  therefore  necessary  to  have  some  <  'universal 
solvent"  that  could  be  exchanged  for  any  commod- 
ity the  purchaser  might  desire.  Gold  and  silver 
gradually  ca*me  to  be  regarded  as  this  "universal 
solvent,"  and  when  commodities  were  bought  and 
sold  they  were  simply  exchanged  for  so  much  of 
these  metals  as  were  equal  to  the  value  of  the 
goods. 


60  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

In  those  days  when  commodities  were  rare, 
when  business  was  limited,  when  transactions 
were  all  made  in  cash,  it  was  supposed  or  assumed 
that  the  gold  and  silver  of  the  world  were  for  some 
unknown  reason  of  about  the  right  quantity  to  do 
the  work.  In  these  days,  when  production  is  infi- 
nitely greater,  when  distribution  and  exchange  is 
the  principal  business  of  the  world  and  incompara- 
bly more  than  then,  when  all  business  is  done  in  a 
different  manner  than  in  primitive  times,  it  is  still 
assumed  that  there  is  substantially  the  right 
amount  of  gold  and  silver  to  do  the  business  of  the 
world.  No  one  has  ever  attempted  to  show  how 
much  money  business  needs  or  what  are  the  natural 
laws  that  govern  the  use  of  money  in  the  exchange 
of  goods.  It  is  assumed  to-day,  as  it  was  a  thou- 
sand years  ago,  that  the  so-called  precious  metals 
are  found  and  can  be  found  in  the  right  quantities 
to  satisfy  the  requirements  of  trade,  and  also  to 
fulfill  the  other  functions  for  which  these  metals 
are  employed. 

THE   VOLUME    OF   MONEY. 

It  is  claimed  and  conceded  on  all  hands  that 
gold  and  silver  circulate  because  of  their  intrinsic 
value ;  that  these  metals  are  money,  and  that  all 
other  forms  of  currency  are  promises  to  pay  money ; 
that  in  the  last  analysis  all  debts  and  all  exchanges 
must  be  paid  in  coin.  It  must  follow  from  this 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  61 

that  the  greater  the  amount  of  coin  the  less  is  its 
value  per  ounce  or  pound,  and  that  it  is  always  to 
the  interest  of  the  debtor  to  increase  the  volume  of 
money,  and  to  the  interest  of  the  creditor  to  dimin- 
ish the  amount.  How  the  volume  of  currency  af- 
fects those  who  are  neither  debtors  nor  creditors 
is  a  matter  of  pure  speculation,  as  no  one  has  ever 
proved,  or  seemingly  tried  to  prove,  how  much 
coin  is  required  to  do  the  business  of  the  world. 
The  chief  equities  in  the  controversy  over  gold  and 
silver  are  between  the  debtor  and  the  creditor. 

It  is  practically  undisputed  that  from  the  for- 
mation of  the  government  up  to  1873  silver  held 
at  least  an  equal  place  before  the  law  as  the  legal 
money  of  the  land.  All  debts  were  payable  in  so 
many  ounces  of  silver  or  so  many  ounces  of  gold, 
as  the  debtor  might  elect.  All  the  gold  and  silver 
that  could  be  obtained  either  by  exchange  or  by 
digging  in  the  earth  was  available  for  the  liquida- 
tion of  indebtedness. 

It  is  claimed  that  the  increased  production  of 
silver  and  the  demonetization  of  this  metal  by  other 
nations  so  added  to  its  volume  as  to  make  it  no 
longer  fitted  to  perform  the  function  of  money,  at 
least  equally  with  gold. 

INCREASING  THE  BURDEN  OF  DEBT. 

The  value  of  gold  and  silver,  like  that  of  all 
other  commodities,  is  governed  by  the  law  of  sup- 


62 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 


ply  and  demand.  A  little  more  than  half  the  gold 
and  silver  of  the  world  is  used  as  money;  the  rest 
is  used  for  other  well-known  purposes.  A  great 
increase  in  silver  without  an  enlarged  demand  must 
decrease  its  value.  And,  equally,  diminishing  the 
amount  of  the  circulating  medium  without  decreas- 
ing its  use  must  increase  its  value.  If  silver  could 
be  shoveled  out  of  the  earth  as  easily  as  sand  it 
would  become  cheaper.  Under  free  coinage  the 
owner  of  412^  grains  could  go  to  the  mint  and 
have  a  dollar  mark  placed  upon  his  coin  and  it 
must  be  taken  to  liquidate  a  dollar's  worth  of  debts. 
As  silver  grew  cheaper,  the  prices  of  all  commodi- 
ties would  necessarily  rise.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
the  United  States,  using  both  gold  and  silver  as 
money,  should  determine  that  silver  should  no 
longer  be  coined,  but  that  gold  must  fill  the  place 
of  both,  then  gold  would  necessarily  rise  and  the 
price  of  all  other  commodities  proportionately  fall. 
The  full  measure  of  this  change  would  not  be  real- 
ized at  once,  but  gradually  the  law  of  supply  and 
demand  would  enhance  the  value  of  the  article  that 
in  this  manner  was  compelled  to  do  double  duty  un- 
til the  prices  had  adjusted  themselves  to  the  de- 
creased volume  of  circulating  medium. 

Prices  did  not  fall  immediately  upon  the  de- 
monetization of  silver  in  1873.  Land  and  com- 
modities have  a  certain  value  that  has  been  grad- 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  63 

aally  given  them  by  the  laws  of  trade.  To  change 
recognized  values  in  the  absence  of  a  panic  is  a 
slow  process,  and  the  full  effect  of  decreasing  the 
volume  of  money  could  not  be  reached  for  years 
after  the  cause  had  commenced  to  operate.  Shut- 
ting off  the  steam  in  a  locomotive  does  not  stop  the 
loaded  train  at  once.  This  change  has  been  con- 
stantly going  on  for  twenty  years.  Every  year 
in  this  time  the  creditor  has  been  able  to  de- 
mand more  than  the  debtor  agreed  to  pay.  It  will 
go  on  until  the  adjustment  is  complete. 

A    QUESTION    OF    HONESTY. 

If  it  be  assumed  that  the  increased  production 
of  silver  and  its  decreased  use  by  other  nations  has 
cheapened  the  commodity  to  the  detriment  of  the 
creditor,  does  it  make  it  honest  to  demonetize  sil- 
ver and  demand  pay  in  gold? 

If  a  note  was  given  to  be  paid  in  wheat  and  in 
the  year  the  note  came  due  the  production  of  wheat 
had  doubled  so  that  the  note  could  be  paid  more 
easily  than  either  the  debtor  or  the  creditor  had 
reason  to  expect,  would  it  not  still  be  just  to  pay  in 
wheat,  and  should  not  the  debtor  profit  by  the  in- 
creased production  of  the  commodity  in  which  he 
agreed  to  pay?  Should  the  creditor  be  allowed  to 
change  the  contract  by  demanding  l  'spring"  wheat 
or  "fall"  wheat  for  his  debt?  If  the  production 
Of  money  increased  after  the  debt  was  made  is  it 


64  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

not  right  that  the  debtor  should  profit  by  this  in- 
crease? If  the  production  of  money  had  decreased, 
would  the  creditor  have  asked  to  change  the  law  to 
include  copper  or  iron  in  the  circulating  medium, 
because  gold  and  silver  were  too  scarce  ?  He  would 
still  have  demanded  his  < 'pound  of  flesh."  If  it 
is  easier  to  pay  than  it  was  then  supposed,  he  has 
no  right  to  demand  more  than  a  pound. 

RIGHTS    AND    WRONGS    OF    THE    DEBTOR. 

Whether  silver  is  cheaper  because  of  increased 
production  in  America  or  because  of  its  smaller 
use  in  Europe  cannot  effect  the  equity  of  the  case. 
When  gold  and  silver  were  made  money  the  debtor 
had  the  right  to  get  them  anywhere  on  the  earth 
and  as  cheaply  as  he  could. 

When  it  is  contended  that  the  increase  of  silver 
makes  money  cheaper,  it  must  be  admitted  that  de- 
stroying silver  and  leaving  gold  to  do  the  work 
makes  money  dearer. 

It  is  deliberately  contended  that  gold  alone 
should  pay  debts,  and  yet  it  is  nowhere  proposed 
that  the  debts  should  be  discounted  to  make  up  for 
the  increased  value  of  gold. 

THE   "INTERNATIONAL    AGREEMENT"   ARGUMENT. 

The  talk  of  "international  agreement"  is  only  a 
delusion  and  a  snare.  To  urge  that  an  international 
agreement  should  be  had  is  to  concede  the  whole 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  65 

case,  and  admit  that  the  bimetallist  is  right.  This 
controversy  is  between  the  use  of  gold  alone  and  the 
use  equally  of  gold  and  silver,  and  neither  inter- 
nationalism nor  ratio  has  any  bearing  on  the 
case. 

If  both  gold  and  silver  should  be  money,  can  it 
be  better  obtained  by  waiting  for  England  or  by 
acting  independently  and  trusting  other  nations  to 
follow  in  our  lead?  But  aside  from  this  the  whole 
talk  of  international  agreement  has  no  bear- 
ing on  the  case.  There  never  was  and  never 
can  be  any  international  money.  No  country 
has  the  power  to  fix  the  value  of  money  outside 
of  its  jurisdiction.  When  American  money  goes  to 
England  or  English  money  comes  here  it  is  taken 
by  weight  as  bullion,  and  in  no  other  way.  It  is 
taken  like  cloth,  or  wheat,  or  corn — as  barter  pure 
and  simple.  All  international  trade  is  barter.  If 
an  American  merchant  desires  to  buy  1,000  yards 
of  cloth  it  is  true  that  the  English  merchant  may 
demand  gold  or  silver  as  he  will.  Not  only  this, 
but  he  may  demand  as  many  ounces  or  pounds  of 
either  one  as  he  desires.  It  is  not  true  that  he  will 
take  only  gold.  He  will  take  silver,  iron,  cotton, 
wheat,  or  any  other  commodity  or  product.  He 
may  not  take  any  of  these  at  tlie  value  which  we 
fix,  but  unless  the  American  merchant  can  afford 
to  give  him  any  commodity  he  desires  upon  the 


66  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

terms  he  asks  he  will  not  make  the  trade.  If  the 
American  merchant  can  profit  by  giving  the  gold, 
silver  or  other  commodity  demanded,  he  will  make 
the  trade  and  ought  to  make  the  trade, 

CAN'T  HAVE  TOO   MUCH  SILVER. 

If  the  American  sends  his  wheat  to,  Europe  he 
will  not  take  silver  unless  the  silver  is  worth  more 
than  the  wheat.  If  silver  becomes  plenty  prices 
will  rise,  but  this  is  the  only  effect,  and  this  is 
certainly  no  reason  why  both  gold  and  silver  should 
not  continue  to  be  the  money  of  the  land.  Silver 
is  a  valuable  commodity  used  in  every  country  of 
the  world,  and  one  of  the  chief  products  of  the 
United  States.  There  is  no  more  danger  that 
America  can  have  too  much  silver  than  that  she 
can  have  too  much  gold  or  too  much  iron. 

The  question  of  ratio  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  controversy.  So  long  as  money  circulates  be- 
cause of  its  commodity  value  all  kinds  of  money 
should  be  of  about  the  same  value.  Gold  and 
silver  have  remained  of  nearly  the  same  relative 
value  for  nearly  100  years.  It  is  possible  that  over 
long  periods  of  time  it  is  desirable  that  the  ratio 
should  be  changed.  The  exact  ratio  at  which  two 
articles  will  exchange  is  a  question  not  of  theory, 
but  of  practice.  To  enlarge  the  use  of  silver 
would  necessarily  increase  its  value.  It  would 
likewise  necessarily  decrease  the  value  of  gold,  as 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  67 

both  commodities  would  then  be  used  to  perform 
the  work  now  done  by  gold  alone. 

HOW    TO   FIX    THE    RATIO. 

Up  to  1873  silver  and  gold  were  coined  on  a 
ratio  of  16  to  1;  they  should  be  restored  to  that 
basis.  If  it  is  then  found  by  experiment  that  the 
ratio  is  not  the  proper  one,  as  governed  by  the  laws 
of  trade,  the  ratio  should  be  changed  for  conveni- 
ence until  they  float  together,  but  in  making  the 
change  neither  the  debtor  nor  the  creditor  should 
be  asked  to  bear  all  the  loss.  The  silver  dollar 
should  be  made  larger  and  the  gold  dollar  propor- 
tionately smaller  until  they  circulate  together. 

It  is,  however,  not  necessary  that  they  should 
be  of  equal  value.  Suppose  the  cheaper  money 
does  drive  out  the  dearer — what  of  it?  Not  a  dol- 
lar's worth  of  gold  will  leave  America  without  a 
full  equivalent  in  something.  This  is  the  law  of 
trade.  If  it  should  all  go  to  Europe,  we  would  get 
something  in  return,  something  worth  more  to  us 
than  the  gold  we  sent  away,  and  with  this  something 
and  the  productions  of  the  country  we  can  buy  it 
back  if  it  must  be  had.  If  silver  should  be  cheaper 
property  would  be  sold  and  debts  contracted  on  the 
basis  of  this  money,  and  no  harm  could  result. 
That  some  contracts  have  been  made  in  gold  only 
shows  how  the  powerful  nullify  the  law.  To  restore 
silver  so  that  it  will  equally  perform  the  functions 


68  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

of  money  will  increase  the  supply  of  money,  and 
thus  make  it  cheaper.  It  will  make  gold  cheaper 
while  it  enhances  the  price  of  silver. 

In  the  history  of  the  country  gold  has  some- 
times been  cheaper  and  silver  has  sometimes  been 
cheaper,  but  business  was  done  the  same.  Man 
does  not  live  by  gold  alone,  whatever  its  advocates 
may  imagine. 

WAITING  ENGLAND'S  PLEASURE. 

In  this  issue  there  ought  to  be  no  chance  for 
men  to  be  deceived;  those  who  are  not  for  bimet- 
allism are  for  gold.  If  we  are  to  wait  for  England 
we  must  wait  forever,  and  all  financiers  know  it 
well.  Both  common  sense  and  a  moderate  degree 
of  national  pride  and  independence  ought  to  show 
the  folly  of  waiting  for  England.  England  owns 
the  bonds  and  credits  of  the  world ;  the  scarcer  the 
money  the  more  she  is  able  to  demand.  If  we  are 
bound  to  follow  England  in  dropping  silver  and 
taking  gold,  she  might  equally  compel  us  to  drop 
gold  and  take  diamonds.  For  America  to  wait  for 
England  to  consent  to  bimetallism  could  only  have 
been  paralleled  by  the  slaves  in  the  south  waiting 
for  the  masters  to  consent  to  freedom. 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  69 

NEED  TO  COIN  SILVER. 

By  FRANKLIN  H.  HEAD. 

I  fully  believe  in  the  entire  practicability  of 
restoring,  in  monetary  affairs,  the  condition  which 
existed  prior  to  1873,  when  all  the  nations  of  the 
world  opened  their  mints  to  the  free  coinage  of  both 
gold  and  silver  upon  a  certain  agreed  ratio.  This 
condition  had  existed  from  the  dawn  of  even  the 
crudest  civilization  to  the  manifest  advantage  of 
the  business  interests  of  the  world.  Prior  to  1873 
no  one  had  ever  thought  of  making  an  obligation 
specifically  payable  in  either  gold  or  silver,  since, 
as  the  coinage  of  each  was  free,  no  one  cared 
whether  payment  was  made  in  one  metal  or  the 
other. 

In  the  consideration  of  the  present  condition 
of  the  currency  question  certain  fundamental 
points  may  be  regarded  as  fundamental  and  ele- 
mentary : 

1.  Any  stable  currency  must  be  either  metallic 
or  redeemable  in  metallic  money.  What  is  known 
as  paper  money  is  convenient  and  invaluable  in  the 
transaction  of  business,  but  would  suffer  instant 
depreciation  were  it  not  redeemable  in  coin.  A 
large  reserve  of  metallic  money  is  therefore  neces- 


70  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

sary  in  order  that  its  paper  representative  may  cir- 
culate at  par. 

2.  An  increase  in  the  quantity  of  money  raises 
prices  and  a  decrease   lowers   them.     The  coin  of 
the  world  is  constantly   shrinking,    from  loss   and 
abrasion,  requiring  constant  additions  to  make  good 
this  loss.     A  constant  increase  of  the  world's  stock 
of  coin  is  also  necessary  to  meet  the  increase  in  the 
volume  of  transactions.     The  gold   and  silver  coin 
of  the  world  are  of  approximately  equal  value,  and 
a  suppression  of  either  metal  from  monetary  service 
doubles  the  demand  for  the  other,  lowers  prices  and 
wages  and  necessarily  produces   universal  disaster. 

3.  The   law   of   supply   and   demand   applies 
equally  to  the  money  metals  as  to  all  things  else, 
and  the  demand  fixes  the  relative  value.     The  law 
cannot  fix  the  abstract   value  of   these   metals  as 
measured  by  other  commodities,  but  it  can  fix  the 
ratio  between  silver  and  gold   as  used  in  the  pay- 
ment   of   obligations   and    the   settlement  of   ex- 
changes.    For  a   long   period  this  ratio   has  been 
fixed  at  from  1 5^  to  1 6  pounds  of  silver  to  one  pound 
of  gold,  and  so  long  as  this  ratio  was  undisturbed 
by  legislation  the  demand  was  equal  to  the  supply. 
When  the  money  function  was  taken  from  silver  the 
demand  therefor  was  greatly  diminished,  since  the 
principal  demand  was  for  coinage,  and  the  market 
value  of  silver,  as  measured  by  gold,    was  largely 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  71 

reduced,  as  would  inevitably  be  the  case  with  any 
commodity.  What  is  known  as  the  fall  in  the  price 
of  silver  is  caused,  not  by  its  increased  production, 
but  its  suppression  as  a  money  metal,  whereby 
three- fourths  of  the  demand  is  arbitrarily  destroyed. 

RESTORED   BY    INTERNATIONAL   AGREEMENT. 

While  believing  in  the  restoration  of  its  money 
function  to  silver,  I  do  not  believe  such  restoration 
possible  except  by  the  concurrent  action  of  all  the 
great  commercial  and,  therefore,  civilized  nations. 
Should  oar  own  mints  alone  be  opened  to  the  free 
coinage  of  silver  all  international  balances  would 
be  paid  us  in  silver,  while  other  nations  would  re- 
fuse to  receive  silver  from  us  when  such  balances 
were  reversed.  The  practical  side  of  this  question, 
therefore,  hinges  upon  the  possibility  of  inducing 
an  international  agreement  among  all  the  great 
commercial  nations  for  the  free  coinage  of  both 
gold  and  silver  upon  an  agreed  ratio. 

For  a  time  the  principal  nations  of  Europe 
seemed  satisfied  with  gold  monometallism,  but  a 
widespread  change  of  opinion  on  that  point  seems 
to  have  developed  within  the  last  two  years.  The 
reason  for  this  change  of  opinion  is  plain.  There 
has  been  throughout  the  world  an  unprecedented 
fall  in  the  prices  in  nearly  all  staple  commodities, 
whereby  the  purchasing  and  debt-paying  power  of 
the  people  has  been  greatly  diminished.  This  has 


72  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

been  followed,  in  some  cases,  by  national  bank- 
ruptcy, and  everywhere  by  diminished  demand  and 
consequent  fall  of  prices  from  the  loss  of  pur- 
chasing power  among  the  people.  In  our  complex 
civilization,  in  a  great  measure,  all  prosper  or 
suffer  in  common.  The  merchant  or  manufacturer 
can  make  no  money  from  an  impoverished  com- 
munity, and  nations  are  equally  amenable  to  this 
rule.  For  a  time  England  apparently  prospered 
from  the  rise  in  gold,  or,  in  other  words,  from  a 
general  fall  in  prices,  inasmuch  as  all  the  world 
owed  her  money,  and  with  the  increase  in  the  pur- 
chasing power  of  such  money  she  would  buy  there- 
with  the  greater  amount  of  every  commodity,  but 
the  bankruptcy  of  the  Argentines,  Egypt,  Turkey 
and  other  nations  and  the  impending  bankruptcy  of 
India  are  bringing  home  to  her  merchants  and 
manufacturers  the  truth, of  the  idea  that  it  is  not 
good  national  policy  to  bankrupt  the  communities 
from  which  a  nation  derives  its  income.  The  con- 
version of  many  of  the  most  intelligent  and  able 
writers  and  thinkers  of  England,  France  and 
Germany  to  the  necessity  of  international  bimet- 
allism is  one  of  the  most  hopeful  signs  of  the 
times. 

IS  A  SINGLE  GOLD  STANDARD  DESIRABLE? 

The  production  of  gold  throughout  the  world  is 
large,  but  the  most  reliable  statistics  indicate  that 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  73 

probably  at  least  70  per  cent  of  the  annual  produc- 
tion of  gold  is  used  in  the  arts,  and  the  30  per  cent, 
or  thereabouts,  left  available  for  coinage  is  not  suf- 
ficient to  make  good  the  shrinkage  by  loss  and 
abrasion  and  to  meet  the  constantly  enlarged  de- 
mand for  coin  as  the  basis  of  all  commercial  trans- 
actions. The  result,  therefore,  is  a  virtual  contrac- 
tion of  the  currency,  leading  to  a  universal  fall  in 
prices,  a  diminution  in  the  volume  of  business,  a 
large  shrinkage  in  wages  and  in  the  purchasing  or 
debt-paying  power  of  the  people.  National  pros- 
perity is  only  possible  when  all  classes  of  business 
are  reasonably  remunerative,  and  this  is  only  possi- 
ble when  substantially  all  labor  is  employed  at  reas- 
onable rates. 

Gold  monometallism  can  be  justified  on  only  two 
grounds : 

1.  That  there  is  a  sufficient  amount  of  gold  to 
form  a  basis  for  the  world' s  exchanges  without  an 
appreciation  of  its  purchasing  power. 

2.  That  the  production  of  silver  is  so  great  as  to 
unfit  it  for  monetary  service. 

TOO  LITTLE  GOLD,  NOT  TOO  MUCH  SILVER. 

As  to  the  first  point,  no  person  can  question  the 
fact  of  a  widespread  and  universal  fall  in  prices  on 
nearly  all  commodities  for  the  last  twenty  years, 
and  a  fall  in  prices  and  an  appreciation  in  the 
value  of  money  are  convertible  terms.  The  pur- 


74  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

chasing  power  of  gold  has  unquestionably  vastly 
increased. 

As  to  the  second  point,  the  best  available  sta- 
tistics show  that  there  is  no  such  increase  in  the 
production  of  silver  as  compared  with  gold  as  to  call 
for  its  demonetization.  The  amount  of  silver  and 
gold  coin  throughout  the  world  is,  from  the  best 
information  obtainable,  substantially  equal  in  value 
at  the  ratio  of  16  to  1;  that  is  to  say  there  are 
sixteen  times  as  many  pounds  of  silver  coins  as  of 
gold  coins.  Experience  through  the  entire  historic 
period  has  shown  this  proportion  to  be  satisfactory 
and  advantageous,  and  the  commerce  of  the  world 
has  adjusted  itself  to  this  ratio  from  time  imme- 
morial. From  1871  to  1892,  both  inclusive,  1892 
being  the  latest  date  to  which  reliable  statistics  are 
now  obtainable,  the  world  produced  of  gold  $2, 450,  - 
084,000,  and  of  silver  at  15^- to  1,  $2,618,687,000. 
From  1801  to  1893  the  production  was  of  gold 
$5,833,543,000,  and  of  silver  at  15£  to  1,  $4,858,- 
359, 000.  For  the  whole  period  of  ninety-two  years, 
therefore,  slightly  more  gold  than  silver  was  pro- 
duced. For  the  shorter  period  of  eleven  years 
slightly  more  silver  than  of  gold  was  produced  at  a 
ratio  of  15£  to  1,  which  was  the  European  ratio  of 
coinage,  being  a  surplus  of  silver  in  this  period  of 
$168,000,000.  Changing  the  European  ratio  to 
our  own  of  16  to  1,  the  surplus  of  production 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  75 

would  be  something  less  than  $87,000,000.  Make 
the  ratio  18  to  1  and  the  excess  in  the  value  of  gold 
produced  would  be  $195,000,000.  These  results 
would  seem  to  indicate  that  the  ratio  should  be 
fixed  at  between  16  and  18  pounds  of  silver  to  1  of 
gold,  at  which  ratio  the  value  produced  of  the  two 
metals  would  be  substantially  the  same. 

BENEFITS   OF   BIMETALLISM. 

The  ratio  between  the  two  metals,  under  an  in- 
ternational agreement  should  be  fixed  by  a  com- 
mission of  experts  of  widely  recognized  ability, 
whose  award  would  thereby  command  the  public 
confidence,  and  with  such  ratio  fixed  and  the  free 
coinage  of  both  metals  by  all  nations  upon  such  a 
ratio,  we  might  look  for  a  coming  and  continuous 
growth  and  prosperity  in  all  branches  of  business. 


76  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 


THE  UNITED  STATES  SHOULD  ADOPT  FREE 

COINAGE  INDEPENDENT  OF  OTHER 

NATIONS. 

By  W.  H.  HARVEY, 

AUTHOR  OF   "COIN'S  FINANCIAL    SCHOOL." 

Mr.  President,  Members  of  the  Illinois  Club, 
and  Gentlemen:  When  accepting  the  invitation  of 
your  committee  I  had  hoped  that  this  discussion 
would  be  on  fundamental  principles  and  facts ;  thus 
educational  in  its  character,  and  later  on  when  bet- 
ter informed  as  to  these  we  would  reach  the  reme- 
dy. I  felt  also  a  keen  desire  to  get  at  Prof. 
Laughlin  on  the  unit  of  value  existing  prior  to  1873 
and  the  "crime"  of  that  year,  two  points  on  which 
he  has  been  misleading  the  readers  of  the  Times- 
Herald.  [Applause.  ]  But  he  has  seen  fit  to  de- 
cline a  discussion  of  those  two  questions,  and  we 
are  to-night  to  take  up  the  remedy — the  last  ques- 
tion covered  by  this  controversy. 

The  first  reason  why  I  am  in  favor  of  indepen- 
dent action  by  this  country  is  that  we  should  not 
be  subjected  to  the  influences  of  the  governments 
of  Europe.  [Great  applause.]  When  our  fore- 
fathers declared  their  political  independence  from 
Europe  it  was  to  free  themselves  from  the  class 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  77 

legislation  of  those  governments  justly  termed 
plutocracies.  If  people  can  be  reduced  to  poverty 
and  the  prosperity  of  the  United  States  can  be 
ruined  by  hanging  to  the  financial  policy  of  Europe, 
then  we  can  be  reduced  to  the  same  condition  by 
financial  legislation  as  a  war  of  conquest  would  re- 
duce us.  The  monometallists  mostly  say  or  admit 
bimetallism  would  be  good  if  we  could  get  inter- 
national bimetallism.  In  other  words  they  agree 
that  there  is  something  radically  wrong,  but  claim 
that  we  are  tied  to  the  financial  policy  of  Europe. 
So  that  if  a  war  of  conquest  in  this  country  by  the 
monarchies  of  Europe,  whose  form  of  government 
is  different  from  ours,  would  reduce  us  to  the  con- 
dition that  the  people  of  those  governments  are  in, 
and  they  can  accomplish  the  same  purpose  by  finan- 
cial legislation,  then  there  is  a  necessity  for  inde- 
pendent action.  [Applause.  ]  Where  there  is  a  neces- 
sity there  is  a  remedy.  Suppose  you  were  to  say  to  a 
man  of  common  sense,  <  'We  are  compelled  to  adopt 
the  financial  policy  of  Europe, "  and  he  replied,  <  'The 
country  is  going  to  waste  and  ruin,  and  desolation 
is  spreading  from  ocean  to  ocean, ' '  and  demon- 
strates that  the  cause  of  it  is  our  adoption  of  the 
financial  policy  of  Europe,  and  we  say  back  to  him, 
"It  makes  no  difference,  we  are  compelled  to  adopt 
the  financial  policy  of  Europe."  This  answer 
would  not  be  acceptable  to  the  hard  headed  citizen 


78  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

of  this  country.  The  governments  of  Europe  are 
plutocracies.  They  squeeze  the  lemon  for  the  peo- 
ple about  every  so  often.  The  few  control  class 
,  legislation  and  the  masses  are  hewers  of  wood  and 
drawers  of  water  for  the  titled  few.  Like  the 
farmer  who  goes  out  to  rob  the  bees'  nests,  they 
rob  the  people  and  then  give  them  time  to  fill  the 
nest  again  before  going  out  to  rob  it  again.  [Great 
applause  and  laughter.  ] 

SHOULD  DECLARE  OUR  INDEPENDENCE. 

We  have  certainly  not  forgotten  the  history  giv- 
ing the  reason  why  our  forefathers  established  this 
government — and  that  was  the  reason.  Now,  if 
financial  legislation  is  one  of  the  classes  of  class 
legislation  by  which  the  many  are  robbed  and  the 
few  enriched,  by  which  the  lemon  is  squeezed,  then 
it  is  one  of  the  institutions  of  tHe  European  gov- 
ernments that  we  as  a  nation  of  people,  republican 
in  form,  should  declare  our  independence  of.  [Ap- 
plause. ]  That  is  the  first  reason  why  independent 
financial  action  should  be  taken  by  the.  United 
States.  If  they  say,  <cWe  must  have  the  same 
money  that  they  have  in  order  to  carry  on 
business  with  them,"  my  reply  is,  '  'that  the  biggest 
business  we  ever  did  carry  on  with  the  balance 
of  the  world,  and  particularly  Europe,  was  the  time 
when  they  had  gold  and  silver  as  money  and  we 
had  neither.  [Applause.  ]  It  is  one  of  those  pe- 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  79 

culiar  arguments  that  wears  its  way  into  a  man's 
brain  when  reiterated  and  monotonously  given  out 
by  the  daily  press  that  we  must  have  the  same 
money  that  the  other  great  commercial  nations  have. 
We  never  stop  to  investigate.  It  belongs  to  that 
catalogue  of  arguments  that  existed  prior  to  1492, 
when  a  majority  of  the  people  of  the  world  said 
that  the  world  was  flat  and  a  few  men,  including 
Columbus,  contended  that  it  was  round.  [Laugh- 
ter.] 

Those  interested  in  purposely  cultivating 
through  ages  an  international  money  on  lines 
marked  out  by  them  have  the  same  possession  of 
the  public  mind  as  the  critics  of  Columbus  had, 
and  those  who  contend  for  financial  independence 
from  Europe  can  be  classed  with  the  followers  of 
that  great  navigator  whose  minds  were  in  advance 
of  the  age  in  which  they  lived. 

This  nation  can  have  an  independent  financial 
system  without  any  reference  whatever  to  the  bal- 
ance of  the  world,  and  can  carry  on  its  own  com- 
merce by  ocean  and  by  land  with  the  other  govern- 
ments of  the  world  notwithstanding.  We  do  not 
now  settle  our  balance  with  Europe  in  coin  except 
on  its  commercial  value  and  by  weight.  Our  com- 
merce has  nothing  to  do  with  it.  Primarily  bal- 
ances of  trade  are  settled  with  trade.  We  give 
them  our  wheat  and  we  take  their  silks,  and  the 


80  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

balance  that  we  may  owe  them  or  they  owe  us  will 
be  settled  just  as  the  merchants  between  the  im- 
porting points  may  agree  to  settle  it.  They  can 
settle  it  for  gold  at  so  much  a  pennyweight  as  meas- 
ured in  the  money  of  their  country  or  our  country, 
or  in  so  much  silver,  or  so  much  copper,  or  so  much 
of  any  other  merchandise  that  may  be  agreed  upon 
between  them  in  their  trade  relations.  There  is  no 
such  thing  as  an  international  money.  A  merchant 
in  London  has  sold  goods  and  vice  versa  with  a 
merchant  in  New  York.  At  the  end  of  six  months 
the  merchant  in  New  York  owes  the  merchant  in 
London  $50,000  dollars  as  measured  in  the  Ameri- 
can money,  whatever  it  is,  and  they  have  an  under- 
standing by  which  the  New  York  merchant  is  to 
settle  those  balances,  and  it  may  be  in  wheat  or  it 
may  be  in  cotton  that  the  contract  would  be  set- 
tled— anything  that  would  be  in  a  general  way 
agreed  upon — but  gold  or  silver,  irrespective  of 
how  much  we  are  coining  of  it  as  money,  could  be 
agreed  upon.  So  that  in  the  beginning  of  a  study 
of  this  question  that  point  can  be  made  clear  to  the 
mind  of  any  man  who  does  his  own  thinking.  [Ap- 
plause. ] 

THEORETICAL    REASONING. 

You  cannot  meet  arguments  that  are  purely  the- 
oretical, such  as  a  man  proving  to  another  that  a 
cat  has  three  tails.  He  proves  it  this  way:  No 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  81 

cat  has  two  tails  and  one  cat  has  one  more  tail  than 
no  cat;  therefore  one  cat  has  three  tails.  [Laugh- 
ter. ]  Profound  theorists  on  the  other  side  of  this 
question  are  now  especially  fond  of  this  class  of 
reasoning.  Growing  out  of  a  long  accustomed 
habit  the  men  who  have  studiously  cultivated  class 
legislation  for  their  benefit  have  impressed  the  com- 
mon masses  with  certain  apparent  fixed  principles 
which  they  are  to  be  controlled  by,  and  one  of  them 
is  the  necessity  of  international  money,  just  as  they 
have  made  you  believe  that  national  bank  money  was 
necessary.  [Applause.  ]  Now,  the  reason  behind 
that  is  this:  They  can  go  to  Washington  and  hy- 
pothecate their  bonds,  draw  the  interest  thereon, 
get  a  loan  on  these  bonds  to  the  amount  of  90  per 
cent  of  their  face  value,  without  paying  any  inter- 
est, to  loan  it  to  you  at  from  7  to  12  per  cent.  This 
is  a  special  privilege.  And  we  have  learned  not  to 
blame  .people  for  doing  these  things.  But  we 
should.  It  should  be  a  common  country  conducted 
for  the  benefit  of  all  the  people.  [Applause.  ] 

What  we  are  contending  for  is  the  opening  of 
the  mints  to  the  free  coinage  of  silver  (they  are 
now  open  to  the  free  and  unlimited  coinage  of  gold 
and  have  never  been  closed  to  that  metal),  and  the 
establishment  of  bimetallism  on  those  simple  and 
fixed  principles  adopted  by  those  statesmen  who 
had  in  view  the  interest  of  no  class,  but  of  all  the 


82  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

people.  What  we  want  is  bimetallism.  And  sci- 
entific bimetallism  is  this : 

First — Free  and  unlimited  coinage  of  both  gold 
and  silver;  these  two  metals  to  constitute  the  pri- 
mary or  redemption  money  of  the  government. 

Second — The  silver  dollar  of  371^  grains  of  pure 
silver  to  be  the  unit  of  value,  and  gold  to  be  coined 
into  money  at  a  ratio  to  be  changed  if  necessary 
from  time  to  time  if  the  commercial  parity  to  the 
legal  ratio  shall  be  affected  by  the  action  of  foreign 
countries. 

Third — The  money  coined  from  both  metals  to 
be  legal  tender  in  the  payment  of  all  debts. 

Fourth — The  option  as  to  which  of  the  two 
moneys  is  to  be  paid  in  the  liquidation  of  a  debt  to 
rest  with  the  debtor,  and  the  government  also  to 
exercise  that  option  when  desirable  when  paying 
out  redemption  money. 

The  mints  are  now  open  to  the  unlimited  coin- 
age of  gold.  Such  portion  of  the  product  of  that 
metal  as  does  not  find  an  immediate  demand  to  be 
used  in  the  arts  and  manufactures  is  taken  to  the 
mints  and  coined  into  money — into  money — and  be- 
comes at  once  the  object  for  which  all  other  pro- 
ducts seek  the  market.  It  thus  has  an  unlimited 
market,  as  the  mints  are  open  to  all  of  it  that  comes. 

This  was  true  also  as  to  silver  prior  to  1873, 
but  by  operation  of  Sec.  21  of  the  act  of  that  year 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  83 

the  mints  were  closed  to  the  unlimited  coinage  of 
that  metal.  Hence  when  silver  now  seeks  the  mar- 
ket and  exhausts  the  demand  supplied  by  the  arts 
and  manufactures,  and  the  small  purchases  of  the 
government  to  coin  it  into  token  money,  the  de- 
mand for  it  ceases.  Gold  has  an  unlimited  demand. 
Silver  has  a  limited  demand.  Silver  is  now  a  com- 
modity to  be  measured  in  gold.  It  is  an  object  to 
be  gored  and  kicked  by  bulls  and  bears.  It  is  shut 
out  from  the  United  States  mint. 

SILVER    IS    TOKEN    MONEY. 

It  is  token  money.  It  has  been  deprived  of 
that  unlimited  demand  it  enjoyed  prior  to  1873. 
We  would  restore  to  it  that  unlimited  demand. 
We  would  open  the  mints  to  it  again.  We  would 
leave  the  mints  open  to  gold  as  they  are  now.  We 
would  give  silver  the  same  privileges  as  gold. 
Restoring  to  it  this  unlimited  demand  would  cause 
the  value  of  silver  to  rise  as  'compared  with  gold. 
This  is  what  we  want.  This  is  what  we  would  do. 
[Applause.] 

We  would  again  make  the  standard  silver  dollai 
the  unit  of  value  as  it  was  before  1873.  It  would 
thus  be  a  dollar,  and  the  bullion  in  it  would  be 
worth  a  dollar,  as  the  number  of  grains  of  bullion 
in  a  dollar  would  have  the  right  to  walk  into  the 
mint  and  be  coined  into  a  dollar.  No  man  would 
take  less  for  it  when  he  could  have  it  coined 


84  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

at  pleasure  into  a  dollar.  We  would  make  gold 
coins  of  the  value  of  so  many  silver  units  or  dol- 
lars, as  the  law  existed  prior  to  1873.  Silver  is  the 
people's  money.  [Applause.]  It  was  so  regarded 
by  our  forefathers,  and  was  the  favored  metal  of 
the  two.  It  was  given  the  position  of  honor  in  the 
coinage  of  our  two  metals  by  having  the  unit  of 
value  made  from  it,  and  gold,  its  companion  metal, 
measured  in  it.  Gold  was  and  is  the  money  of  the 
rich.  This  was  to  be  a  government  of  the  people, 
and  the  people's  money  was  to  be  the  most  favored. 
Twice  when  the  commercial  ratio  between  the  two 
metals  made  it  advisable  to  change  the  legal  ratio 
the  change  was  made  by  recoining  the  gold  coins. 
This  was  in  1834  and  1837.  The  spirit  of  our  fore- 
fathers then  lived  in  their  sons.  [Applause. }  The 
gold  coins  were  changed  in  both  weight  and  size. 
In  1834  the  gold  eagle  had  twelve  grains  taken  out 
of  it.  In  1837  the  gold  eagle  had  two-tenths  of  a 
grain  added  to  it.  No  change  was  ever  made  in 
the  quantity  of  pure  silver  in  the  silver  unit.  There 
were  to  be  no  two  yardsticks.  The  rich  man's 
money — gold — was  recoined  when  the  commercial 
ratio  changed  to  interfere  with  the  legal  ratio.  This 
is  the  law  we  would  re-enact.  [Applause.] 

We  would  make  both  legal  tender  in  the  pay- 
ment of  all  debts.  We  would  repeal  the  law  of 
1878  and  the  Sherman  law  of  1890,  authorizing 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  85 

contracts  (bonds,  notes  and  mortgages)  to  be  taken 
payable  in  gold  only.  We  would  allow  no  discrim- 
ination to  be  made  betwen  the  legal  tender  charac- 
ter of  the  two  metals.  We  would  allow  no  private 
individuals  to  dictate  to  the  government  what 
its  legal  tender  money  should  be.  We  would 
place  the  white  metal  on  an  equal  footing  with 
the  colored  metal  without  regard  to  previous 
condition  of  race  or  servitude.  [Enthusiastic 
applause.] 

We  would  give  the  option  to  the  debtor  if  there 
was  any  preference  as  to  which  of  the  two  he  would 
use  in  the  payment  of  a  debt.  [Cries  of  <  'Good  ! 
Good!  "]  A  break  in  the  commercial  parity  causes 
the  cheapest  metal  to  be  used.  This  increases  the 
demand  for  the  cheaper  metal.  This  increased  de- 
mand restores  the  value  of  the  metal  that  had  thus 
fallen  below  a  parity  and  brings  it  back  to  parity. 
To  give  the  option  to  the  creditor  causes  the  dearer 
metal  to  be  demanded,  and  it  thus  grows  dearer 
and  dea:er  and  a  parity  is  permanently  broken,  and 
the  gap  grows  wider  and  wider.  When  the  debtor 
has  the  option  the  two  metals  will  oscillate  close  to  a 
parity  and  substantially  at  a  parity.  This  oscillation 
is  the  elasticity  that  bimetallism  gives  to  primary 
money.  If  one  becomes  scarce  the  other  is  used. 
If  one  is  cornered  the  other  takes  its  place.  Either 
answers  for  money.  [Applause.  ] 


86  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

KNOWLEDGE    DIED   WITH   OUR   ANCESTORS. 

A  true  knowledge  of  bimetallism  and  the  sim- 
plicity of  that  system  died  with  our  ancestors. 
Selfishness  stalked  into  the  American  Congress  at 
a  time  when  neither  metal  was  being  used  as  pri- 
mary money  (our  primary  money  was  then  paper 
money),  at  a  time  when  corruption  was  rife  in  our 
National  Legislature,  followed  by  articles  of  im- 
peachment against  Vice-President  Colfax  for  com- 
plicity in  the  Oakes-Ames  affair;  the  resignation  of 
Secretary  of  War  Belknap  for  bribery,  the  charge 
of  corruption  against  numerous  Congressmen  in  con- 
nection with  the  Credit  Mobilier  scandal  and  land 
grant  swindles.  At  a  time  when  statesmanship 
was  dwarfed  in  personal  selfishness  men  who  knew 
what  the  effect  of  such  a  change  in  our  financial 
policy  meant  organized  successfully  the  first  trust 
to  be  benefited  by  National  legislation  in  this  coun- 
try. It  was  a  money  trust.  It  was  the  demoneti- 
zation of  silver.  The  money  of  the  people  was 
destroyed.  Silver  at  that  time  was  at  a  slight  pre- 
mium over  gold. 

By  this  act  the  mints  were  closed  to  the  un- 
limited coinage  of  silver,  except  the  trade  dollar, 
which  was  overvalued  by  eight  grains  and  intended 
only  for  export  to  China,  and  it  was  shut  off  by  the 
act  of  1876,  except  as  the  Secretary  of  the  Treas- 
ury might  permit  it  to  be  coined. 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  87 

Silver  had  then  begun  to  fall  as  measured  in 
gold,  and  the  breach  in  the  commercial  parity  of  the 
two  metals,  as  was  natural,  gradually  widened.  With 
resumption  gold  asserted  its  importance  and  silver 
correspondingly  declined.  Under  the  Bland- Alli- 
son act  of  1878  creditors  began  to  make  their  notes, 
bonds,  and  mortgages  payable  in  gold  to  the  exclu- 
sion of  all  other  forms  of  legal  tender  money.  This 
increased  the  demand  for  gold.  Silver  had  ceased 
to  be  primary  money.  It  had  taken  a  place  with 
nickel  and  copper  as  token  money,  all  redeemable 
directly  and  indirectly  in  gold.  That  elasticity 
which  the  alternate  use  of  silver  with  gold  that 
true  bimetallism  gave  to  our  primary  money  was 
now  absent.  If  the  demand  for  gold  became  too 
great  to  supply  the  normal  needs  of  primary  or  re- 
demption money  there  was  nothing  to  take  its  place 
as  such.  Creditors  would  demand  the  dearest 
metal  and  the  law  had  given  them  the  right  to  do 
so.  There  was  but  the  one  metal  to  which  the 
mints  were  open — the  commercial  value  of  the 
other  metal  had  been  lowered  by  legal  discrimi- 
nation against  it.  Gold  was  carrying  the  silver 
just  as  it  is  carrying  paper  money.  Silver  was 
not  permitted  to  take  the  place  of  gold.  If  gold 
was  cornered  neither  the  United  States  Treasury 
nor  the  debtor  could  put  silver  in  competition 
with  it. 


88  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

They  must  go  to  the  men  who  have  the  gold  and 
get  it  and  submit  to  their  terms.  A  corner  on 
beef  cannot  seriously  threaten  the  health  of  the 
people  of  this  nation  so  long  as  mutton  and  pork 
are  in  competition  with  beef.  A  corner  on  gold 
could  not,  as  it  does  now,  seriously  threaten  the 
credit  of  this  Nation  if  silver  were  in  competition 
with  gold  as  primary  money.  [Applause  and 
cheers.  ] 

SUGGESTS  A  REMEDY. 

What  is  the  remedy?  Shall  we  follow  Mr. 
Cleveland  and  Mr.  Sherman  and  such  party  leaders 
any  farther?  They  have  led  us  into  a  swamp  and 
the  mire  is  getting  deeper  and  deeper ;  we  are  sink- 
ing in  the  mud  and  slush  more  and  more,  with  an 
abyss  and  oblivion  beyond.  Speaking  of  these  two 
party  leaders  reminds  me  of  the  good  old  Methodist 
woman  who  was  invited  by  a  Presbyterian  woman 
friend  to  go  to  her  Presbyterian  church  to  hear  a 
Presbyterian  preacher.  Well,  when  they  got  there 
they  took  seats  up  in  the  amen  corner,  and  to  the 
surprise  of  the  good  old  Methodist  woman  she 
found  that  the  Presbyterian  preacher  could  preach 
a  real  soul-stirring  sermon,  and  she  expressed  her 
satisfaction  by  saying  amen.  This  attracted  the 
attention  of  the  good  old  presbyterian  deacons,  and 
they  commenced  looking  cross-eyed  at  her.  But 
the  sermon  grew  better  and  better,  and  the  good  old 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  89 

Methodist  woman  was  soon  crying  hallelujah!  The 
dignity  of  the  Presbyterian  deacons  was  shocked. 
From  crying  hallelujah  the  good  old  Methodist 
woman  soon  got  to  clapping  her  hands  and  shout- 
ing. This  was  too  much  for  the  deacons  and  two 
of  them  took  hold  of  her  and  picking  her  up  car- 
ried her  out  of  the  church.  As  they  passed  down 
the  aisle  with  her  she  exclaimed:  "I  cannot  stand 
the  honor. ' '  She  repeated  this  statement  several 
times:  "I  cannot  stand  the  honor."  The  curiosity 
of  the  old  deacons  was  excited  to  know  what  she 
meant,  and  when  they  set  her  down  in  the  vestibule 
of  the  church  they  asked  her  why  she  had  said 
what  she  did.  She  replied:  "Christ  rode  out  of 
Jerusalem  on  one  donkey  and  I  have  ridden  out  of 
this  church  on  two. "  [Great  applause  and  laughter.] 
Let  us  have  nothing  more  to  do  with  the  men 
who  have  assisted  in  tying  the  hands  of  this  great 
nation  and  delivering  its  financial  policy  over  to  the 
gold  gamblers  of  the  world.  [Applause.]  The  bank 
of  Rothschilds  in  England  is  now  behind  the  United 
States  Treasury.  [A  voice,  "True,  true."]  They 
are  our  financial  agents,  our  financial  managers. 
We  are  paying  them  the  princely  salary  of  $8,000,- 
000  for  each  six  months  of  their  valuable  services. 
It  requires  special  pleading  to  defend  this  trans- 
action and  the  circumstances  which  have  led  up  to 
it.  You  will  hear  some  of  that  special  pleading 


90  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

tonight  from  the  gentleman  who  is  to  follow  me. 
[Laughter.]  We  are  now  in  the  hands  of  the  pawn- 
brokers of  Europe.  They  will  take  the  same  care 
of  us  that  the  spider  did  with  the  fly.  [Laughter.  ] 
We  have  very  little  gold  left  in  this  country.  We 
are  a  debtor  nation  and  our  people  and  corporations 
are  heavily  in  debt  to  the  people  in  England,  and 
the  interests  on  what  we  owe  them  amounts  an- 
nually to  about  $250,000,000,  payable  in  gold. 
They  demand  gold.  Contracts  call  for  it  in  gold. 
To  pay  this  we  have  a  balance  due  us  in  trade  with 
Europe  of  about  $100,000,000.  That  leaves  $150-, 
000,000  still  left  to  pay  them.  How  do  we  pay  it? 
We  produce  about  $40, 000, 000  in  gold  yearly.  We 
give  them  that.  This  leaves  about  $100,000,000 
still  due  them.  How  do  we  pay  it?  Out  of  our 
reserve  stock  of  gold.  With  them  getting  all  our 
money,  represented  by  the  balance  due  us  on  ex- 
ports, and  all  our  annual  production  of  gold,  and 
$100,000,000  annually  from  our  reserve  stock 
of  gold,  how  long  is  our  reserve  stock  of  gold  to 
last? 

ASKS   "WHERE  WILL  IT  END?" 

How  are  we  to  replenish  it?  There  is  only  one 
way — that  is  to  borrow  it  from  those  who  have  it, 
and  that  means  England.  And  that  is  what  we 
are  doing.  That  means  more  interest,  more  gold 
annually  to  be  paid  to  England.  Where  will  it 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  91 

end?  It  means  the  "dismal  swamp"  and  "hell's 
half  acre"  beyond.  This  is  what  having  a  gold 
standard  means.  A  primary  money  without  the 
elasticity  that  two  metals  give;  the  rich  man's 
money — a  money  that  is  easily  cornered.  That  can 
be  physically  cornered — cornered  in  this  room;  all 
of  it;  all  that  is  in  the  world.  A  dollar  from  it  is 
the  size  of  a  drop  of  water — so  small  that  by  act 
of  Congress  September  26,  1889,  its  further  coin- 
age has  been  prohibited.  We  now  have  a  unit  of 
value  so  small  as  to  be  impractical  for  use.  That 
cannot  be  coined  into  money  the  size  of  a  poor 
man's  transaction.  This  is  not  now  a  poor  man's 
government. 

How  are  we  to  pay  these  debts  to  England? 
Repudiate  them?  No.  Robbers'  dollars  as  they 
are,  let  us  pay  them.  Result  of  a  conspiracy 
played  on  us  while  we  slept,  yet  let  us  pay  them. 
[Great  applause.]  If  we  don't,  Lyman  Gage  or 
Russell  Sage  will  say  we  are  dishonest.  They  will 
never  say  the  other  fellow  is  dishonest.  He  wears 
good  clothes,  looks  important,  and  owns  a  news- 
paper. [Laughter.]  But  how  are  we  to  pay  those 
debts  to  England?  It  is  this  way:  Restore  silver; 
put  it  in  competition  with  gold  on  a  legal  ratio  of 
16  to  1.  Repeal  all  laws  allowing  a  discrimination 
between  the  two  metals ;  stop  gold  notes  from  being 
taken ;  put  silver  in  competition  with  gold  as  quick 


92  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

as  possible.  Where  gold  contracts  do  not  exist 
silver  will  go  at  once  into  competition  with  gold, 
and  this  will  take  some  of  the  demand  off  gold. 
To  that  extent  it  will  lower  the  value  of  gold.  The 
extra  demand  for  silver  will  raise  its  value.  Every- 
thing will  advance  in  value  at  once.  The  Tribune 
admits  that.  [Laughter.]  As  silver  advances, 
the  silver  England  is  now  buying  from  us  to  ship 
to  India  ($15,000,000  last  year)  to  buy  wheat  and 
cotton  will  cost  her  more.  India  wheat  and  cotton 
that  she  buys  with  silver  will  cost  her  that  much 
more.  A  farmer  in  India  wants  an  ounce  of  silver 
for  a  bushel  of  wheat.  At  free  coinage  that  ounce 
of  silver  is  $1.29.  That  means  that  if  England 
pays  us  $1.29  for  an  ounce  of  silver,  wheat  from 
India  will  cost  it  $1.29  per  bushel.  Then  it  will 
pay  us  $1.29  per  bushel  for  our  wheat.  It  now 
buys  silver  from  us  at  65  cents  per  ounce  and  buys 
wheat  and  cotton  with  it  in  India,  and  we  must 
compete  with  that  price.  When  our  silver  advances 
and  the  price  of  all  our  products  advance  and 
wheat  and  cotton  goes  back  to  their  old  price  we 
will  be  more  able  to  pay  our  debts.  [Applause.] 
Our  balance  in  trade  will  be  $200,000,000  instead 
of  $100,000,000,  and  this  will  only  leave  us  $50,- 
000,000  to  pay  the  balance  we  owe  England  an- 
nually. The  only  way  to  pay  England  is  to  ad- 
vance prices  permanently,  not  spasmodically  as  is 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  93 

now  being  done  on  a  few  articles.  We  are  now 
getting  drunk  on  more  money  borrowed  from  Eng- 
land. Fifty  million  dollars  on  railroad  bonds  last 
week.  The  relapse  will  be  worse  than  the  last  at- 
tack. But  they  say  gold  will  leave  us  and  will  go  out 
of  sight,  and  how  are  we  to  get  it  to  pay  our  gold 
debts?  We  are  now  paying  100  per  cent  premium 
for  it  with  our  silver,  and  about  the  same  premium 
on  it  in  our  wheat,  cotton  and  other  products. 
When  we  have  put  silver  in  competition  with  gold 
the  premium  cannot  possibly  be  that  much.  If 
when  our  mints  are  open  to  silver  gold  is  held  at 
25  per  cent  premium,  it  will  mean  that  we  have 
taken  75  per  cent  of  the  present  premium  out  of 
it,  as  it  now  takes  the  silver  in  two  silver  dollars  to 
buy  one  of  them.  It  will  then  only  take  one  and 
a  quarter  of  one  of  our -silver  dollars  to  buy  one 
gold  dollar,  and  it  will  take  less  of  any  of  our  other 
property  to  buy  gold  than  it  does  now.  It  is  fool- 
ish to  jsay  that  when  silver  is  in  competition  with 
gold  that  gold  will  cost  no  more.  As  in  the  for- 
mer illustration,  as  well  say  that  beef  will  go  higher 
by  putting  pork  and  mutton  in  competition  with  it. 
As  we  get  these  gold  debts  paid  off  we  will  be  more 
independent.  We  can  show  gold  that  we  do  not 
depend  on  it  for  money.  It  will  then  be  our  slave. 
It  is  now  our  tyrant.  It  will  then  come  back  and 
beg  us  to  take  it  as  in  1873,  when  it — one  of  these 


94  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

gold  dollars — was  worth  two  cents  less  than  a  sil- 
ver dollar.  The  more  importance  we  place  on  it 
the  more  we  have  to  pay  for  it ;  the  less  importance 
we  attach  to  it  the  less  we  will  have  to  give  for  it. 
[Applause  and  cheers.] 

If  a  man  suddenly  finds  himself  floundering  in 
the  middle  of  a  stream  the  quickest  way  out  is  to 
strike  out  for  the  nearest  shore.  The  quickest  way 
out  of  the  present  situation  is  to  leave  the  mints  as 
they  are,  open  to  the  free  and  unlimited  coinage  of 
gold,  and  throw  them  open  to  the  free  and  un- 
limited coinage  of  silver  at  the  ratio  of  1  to  16  as 
full  primary — redemption — money.  [Applause.] 
And  why  the  ratio  of  1  to  16?  Because  that  was 
the  ratio  when  the  trick  was  played.  Justice  de- 
mands it.  A  great  wrong  has  been  committed  and 
to  right  the  wrong  is  the  first  thing  to  do.  [Cries 
of  Hear!  Hear!] 

With  the  mints  of  this  great  nation  open  to  the 
free  and  unlimited  coinage  of  silver  a  demand  has 
been  created  sufficient  to  absorb  all  the  surplus  sil- 
ver in  the  world  if  it  wishes  to  unload  upon  us. 
How  much  silver  is  there  in  the  world?  As  ex- 
pressed in  dollars  there  is  $4,000,000,000  of  it 
available  for  use  as  money.  As  expressed  in  bulk 
there  is  the  cube  of  sixty-six  feet.  It  will  all  go 
in  the  room  of  the  First  National  Bank  of  this  city 
and  the  basement  thereunder. 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  95 

Now,  we  will  pull  the  throttle  valve;  we  pass 
the  act  of  remonetization.  The  mints  are  thrown 
open  as  they  were  prior  to  1873.  Now,  what  is  the 
result?  It  would  be  like  an  engine  starting  off  on 
a  rough  track  to  start  with,  probably.  Here  would 
come  the  silver  of  the  world,  we  will  say,  to  take 
our  gold  away.  "You  fellows  have  overrated  sil- 
ver. We  are  willing  to  swap  with  you ;  we  will  give 
you  our  silver  and  take  your  gold."  Well,  here 
they  come  with  it.  How  are  they  going  to  give  us 
their  silver?  They  give  us  silver  for  our  gold. 
How  much  would  they  get  and  how  much  would 
they  give  us?  At  the  present  time  there  is  probably 
about  $400, 000, 000  of  gold  in  the  United  States.  It 
is  only  a  very  small  sum  compared  with  the  neces- 
sities of  the  country.  Now,  suppose  they  got  all 
of  our  gold.  What  would  they  do  with  it?  Would 
they  eat  it?  Is  there  anything  sacred  about  gold 
or  silver,  either,  except  for  the  use  of  the  arts  and 
manufactures  and  for  their  desirability  to  use  as 
money?  Now,  they  want  to  bring  us  the  balance 
of  their  silver.  What  do  we  give  them  for  it?  We 
give  them  our  products.  Ships  are  coming  into 
our  harbors  from  all  portions  of  the  world  bringing 
us  the  silver  of  the  world — this  sixty-six  feet.  (I 
am  taking'an  extreme  view  of  it — a  monometallist's 
view  of  it.)  And  they  are  going  back  with  the 
products  of  our  spindles  and  looms  and  of  our  fields. 


96  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

They  have  got  our  products  and  we  have  got  their 
silver.  We  can  go  to  work  and  raise  the  same 
products  next  year  over  again  and  tell  them  to 
bring  some  more  of  it  if  they  have  got  it.  They 
bring  us  all  their  silver  and  they  have  found  out 
that  we  have  got  enough  to  give  them  for  it.  In 
other  words  the  United  States  if  big  enough  when 
she  throws  her  mints  open  to  the  free  coinage  of 
silver  to  take  all  the  silver  in  the  world  and  give 
up  her  products  in  payment  for  it;  and  such  a  na- 
tion can  fix  the  ratio  between  gold  and  silver. 
[Great  applause.]  They  could  find  ships  enough  to 
bring  it  to  us.  Two  ships  would  carry  it  all.  The 
products  of  this  country  for  a  single  year  could 
take  it  all.  And  we  could  still  say:  "Come  on. 
We  have  more  to  sell  you."  [Cheers  and  applause.] 

GOOD  FOR  OUR  MANUFACTURERS. 

Such  a  thing  would  put  our  manufactories  at 
work.  There  would  be  no  idle  labor  in  the  United 
States  in  ninety  days  after  the  monometallists  tried 
that  game  on  us.  There  is  only  $1,400,000,000  of 
silver  in  the  world  that  is  not  in  the  coins  of  the 
established  governments. 

It  would  be  the  very  best  thing  that  could  hap- 
pen to  this  country  if  we  could  trade  what  is  claimed 
to  be  $600,000,000  of  gold  in  this  country  (but  in 
truth  less  than  $400,000,000)  for  all  the  silver  of 
the  world.  It  is  just  as  good  as  money.  It  is  an 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  ,      97 

erroneous  idea  to  stand  gold  up  and  worship  it  as  a 
great  god.  There  is  nothing  in  it  except  its  use  in 
tne  arts  and  its  use  as  money,  and  you  have  been 
impressed  with  its  use  of  money  simply  because  it 
has  been  impressed  upon  you.  You  don't  have  to 
carry  silver  around  with  you.  You  don't  carry  gold 
around  with  you.  We  carry  more  silver  than  we  do 
gold.  You  carry  a  paper  substitute  to  represent  it. 
Gold  would  immediately  come  back  and  knock  at  our 
door.  (I  mean  if  this  happened.  I  don't  admit  it 
will  happen,  because  I  won't  say  that  the  balance  of 
the  world  are  fools  enough  to  give  us  their  silver.) 
What  I  say  will  happen  will  be  this :  When  a  great 
government  like  the  United  States  says:  "Here 
is  equal  exchange,  16  for  1,  gold  for  silver,'' 
that  a  man  in  France  is  not  going  to  part  with 
his  silver  for  gold  unless  he  gets  that  much  for 
it — unless  he  gets  as  much  for  it  as  the  United 
States  will  pay  for  it,  less  the  cost  of  exchange. 
[Applause.] 

So  that  when  a  government  that  is  big  enough  to 
take  all  the  silver  in  the  world,  if  it  wants  to  test 
its  capacity,  a  demand  is  created  by  an  influence 
that  is  able  to  sustain  that  demand,  so  that  a  man 
nowhere  in  the  world  is  going  to  sell  his  silver  for 
gold,  for  any  less  than  he  can  get  for  it  in  the 
United  States.  But  we  will  not  have  to  go  it  alone. 
Mexico,  Central  and  South  America  are  already 


98  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

with  us  when  we  start.  We  start  with  one-half  of 
the  world  geographically;  all  bonded  together  in 
sympathy.  [Applause.]  The  reason  why  Mexico 
and  South  America  governments  cannot  go  it  alone 
is  because  they  are  small  commercial  governments. 
Europe  and  the  United  States  are  too  much  for 
them.  The  enormous  demand  made  for  gold  by 
the  enormous  commercial  transactions  of  Europe 
and  the  United  States  makes  a  demand  for  gold 
that  the  governments  of  Mexico,  South  America, 
and  China  and  Japan  are  not  equal  to  overcome. 
So  that  the  United  States,  when  she  would  start, 
would  have  the  assistance  of  these  weaker  govern- 
ments with  her. 

France  said  to  the  United  States  at  the  inter- 
national conference  in  1876  to  our  delegates:  "We 
come  here  to  hear  your  proposition  and  to  follow 
you;  all  you  have  to  do  is  to  start."  [Applause.] 
France  has  been  enforcing  the  bimetallic  system 
and  refusing  to  pay  out  except  half  and  half,  say- 
ing to  us:  "We  are  waiting  on  you;  open  your 
mints  and  we  will  follow."  So  we  would  start 
with  the  Western  Hemisphere,  with  China  and 
Japan  on  the  Eastern  Hemisphere,  and  with  France 
with  the  United  States,  two  of  the  greatest  govern- 
ments in  the  world.  When  the  nations  of  the 
world  that  give  importance  to  silver  have  a  com- 
mercial influence  as  great  as  those  nations  which 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  99 

give  importance  to  gold  the  commercial  parity  be- 
tween the  two  metals  will  settle  itself.  [Ap- 
plause.] England  demonetized  silver  in  1816,  and 
yet  there  was  a  commercial  parity  maintained  at 
rates  fixed  from  that  time  to  1873.  The  United 
States,  France,  and  the  Latin  Union  had  their 
mints  all  open  to  silver  and  England  stopping  the 
free  coinage  of  silver,  had  no  effect  upon  it.  So, 
if  we  begin,  we  begin  strong  enough  to  do  it.  i  'The 
way  to  resume  is  to  resume."  [Cries  of  "Yes!" 
"Yes!"]  The  way  to  remonetize  is  to  throw  our 
mints  open  and  we  have  got  it.  We  will  have 
higher  prices  once  more.  Everybody  can  make 
some  money.  "There  is  not  that  paralyzed  and 
deadly  feeling  that  comes  with  the  destruction  of 
prices  and  the  hoarding  of  money.  Now,  suppose 
that  gold  does  still  leave  us  and  you  want  to  stop 
it.  You  don't  need  it  in  settling  with  a  foreign 
country.  We  demonstrated  that  during  the  war, 
because  a  man  can  go  and  buy  it  at  whatever  it 
will  cost  in  order  to  pay  in  settlement  of  his  balance 
of  trade.  Our  trade  with  foreign  nations  is  only  4 
per  cent  of  our  business,  and  our  domestic  trade  is 
96  per  cent  of  all  our  business.  Which  do  you 
want  legislated  in  the  interest  of — 96  per  cent  or 
the  4  per  cent?  [Applause.] 

But  suppose  you  keep  the  gold  and  have  gold 
and  silver  both  circulating  among  us.  Gold  doesn't 


100  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

circulate  now;  but  suppose  we  wanted  to  keep  them 
on  a  commercial  parity  and  found  that  the  condi- 
tions that  I  have  described  didn't  do  it,  how  would 
you  do  it?  The  first  thing  would  be,  how  can  we 
increase  the  demand  for  silver?  Well,  it  might  be 
done  two  or  three  ways.  In  the  first  place  we 
would  send  a  commission  or  several  commissions  to 
Germany  and  say  to  those  people:  "Here,  we,  the 
great  United  States,  have  begun  the  work  of  de- 
claring emancipation  for  the  human  race  for  these 
burdens  that  are  upon  them,  and  we  want  to  add 
our  argument  to  the  arguments  of  your  able 
bimetallists  here  in  Berlin ;  we  want  you  to  come  in 
with  us."  [Applause.]  Wouldn't  it  have  some 
effect?  Would  it  not  have  more  effect  than  to  lie 
back  like  dogs  in  the  manger,  as  we  are  doing  now? 
Germany  could  be  persuaded,  possibly,  with  the  in- 
fluence of  other  bimetallists  so  that  we  could  go  on 
in  that  missionary  work,  launched  on  a  gigantic  scale 
as  it  would  be,  until  *we  had  back  all  of  the  govern- 
ments of  the  world  where  we  were  prior  to  1873,  ex- 
cept England.  We  don't  want  it  at  all.  You  are  not 
going  to  get  it,  either.  I  would  just  as  soon  go  to 
England,  to  the  men  who  mold  legislation1  in  Eng- 
land, and  ask  them  to  give  us  bimetallism  as  I 
would  to  go  to  the  rankest  gold  bug  in  Wall  street 
and  ask  him  to  go  down  and  persuade  Mr.  Cleve- 
land to  turn  over  to  us.  [Applause.] 


THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY.  101 

MAN   A    SELFISH   BEING. 

Why?  Man  is  moved  by  selfish  motives,  unless 
he  has  freed  himself  from  those  base  instincts,  and 
large  money  makers  who  have  long  since  got  more 
than  they  needed  in  this  world,  and  are  still  piling 
up  more  for  the  purpose  of  saying  that  I  am  the 
righest  man  in  the  world,  or  that  I  am  richer  than 
my  neighbor,  and  so  my  wife  can  say  that  she  is 
richer  than  Mrs.  Smith — when  you  strike  a  man 
like  that,  and  that  is  the  kind  of  men  you  strike 
when  you  go  to  England,  who  control  legislation 
there,  there  is  a  selfish  motive  for  their  monometal- 
lism, and  it  is  because  they  are  the  creditor  nation 
of  the  world.  All  the  world  owes  them  money,  and 
what  is  the  object  of  commerce?  It  is  the  ex- 
change of  property — property  for  property,  prop- 
erty for  money,  and  money  for  property,  and  Eng- 
land can  exchange  its  gold  that  you  owe  it  and  all 
the  world  owes  it  for  twice  as  much  of  your  prop- 
erty as  it  could  if  we  had  bimetallism.  In  round 
numbers  there  are  as  many  silver  dollars  in  the 
world  as  gold  dollars.  The  statistics  will  show  you 
that  there  is  but  a  slight  difference,  an  equal 
amount  of  each,  dollar  for  dollar,  free  coinage 
prices ;  and  when  you  add  silver  to  gold  as  primary 
money  prices  advance,  and  England' s  gold  would 
then  have  its  value  taken  out  of  it,  and  it  would 
have  to  pay  twice  as  much  for  our  property. 


102  THE  PEOPLE'S  MONEY. 

Now,  that  is  the  reason  why  it  won't  do  it.  [Ap- 
plause.] 

If  an  undue  and  unrighteous  inflence  by 
sqhemers  and  tricksters  abnormally  enhances  the 
value  of  gold  so  a  commercial  parity  at  16  to  1  can 
not  be  maintained,  then  do  as  our  forefathers  did, 
change  the  ratio,  and  make  the  change  in  the 
weight  and  size  of  the  gold  coins.  Monroe  and 
Jackson  did  it.  They  were  not  called  dishonest 
for  doing  so.  They  were  legislating  in  the  interest 
of  the  people  and  not  in  the  interest  of  the  favored 
few.  We  are  not  compelled  to  keep  the  legal  ratio 
at  16  to  1;  we  can  change  it  to  20  to  1,  if  neces- 
sary, to  fix  the  legal  ratio  to  correspond  with  the 
commercial  ratio,  but  if  the  change  is  made  let  us 
make  it  in  the  rich  man's  money  and  not  in  the 
poor  man' s  money.  To  lessen  the  size  of  the  gold 
coins  makes  more  dollars.  To  increase  the  size  of 
the  silver  coins  makes  less  dollars.  Let  us  have 
more  dollars  rather  than  less  dollars.  [Applause.  ] 
A  parity  at  the  same  ratio  is  practicable  as  admitted 
by  the  experience  of  ages.  This  is  what  we  ask. 

This  is  a  question  of  capital  on  one  side  and  hu- 
manity on  the  other,  of  sound  money — the  sound  of 
the  clod  on  the  coffin — on  one  side,  and  sound  money 
— the  sound  that  has  the  honest  ring  of  the  people's 
money  in  it — on  the  other  side.  It  is  a  question  of 
an  English  policy  or  an  American  policy.  Which 
shall  it  be?  [Prolonged  applause  and  cheers.] 


GOLD  AND  SILVER.  103 


HISTORY  OF  GOLD  AND  SILVER. 

In  remote  antiquity  the  value  of  silver  seems  every- 
where to  have  been  equal  to  that  of  gold.  In  some 
countries,  as  for  instance,  Ancient  Germany  and  Ancient 
Arabia,  silver  was  more  valuable  than  gold.  As  late  as 
the  17th  century  of  our  era  gold  and  silver  were  valued 
equally  in  Japan.  In  the  Orient,  generally,  the  ratio 
between  the  two  metals  was  less  than  in  Europe,  even 
down  to  the  middle  of  the  19th  century,  and  the  result 
was  the  absorption  of  immense  quantities  of  silver  in  the 

1594  B.  C.    Cadmus  mined  gold  in  Thrace. 

1400  B.  C.  Gold  and  silver  used  as  money  in  Egypt, 
India  and  Arabia. 

1100  B.  C.  The  Phoenicians  worked  the  gold  placers  of 
the  Guadalquiver  in  Spain. 

480  to  206  B.  C.  Silver  mines  of  Spain  were  worked  by 
the  Carthaginians. 

450  B.  C.  Herodotus  states  the  ratio  to  be  13  to  1  in 
Greece. 

330  B.  C.  Alexander  the  great  won  by  the  conquest  of 
Asia  over  $300,000,000  of  gold  and  silver. 

60  B.  C.    Ratio  in  Rome  9  to  1. 

14  A.  D.  Amount  of  precious  metals  in  the  civilized 
world  estimated  at  $1,800,000,000.  The  drain  to  the 
East  began  at  this  period. 

650  A.  D.    In  Arabia,  ratio  6J;  in  France,  10. 

800  A.  D.  Total  supply  of  precious  metals  about  $165,- 
000,000.  At  this  time  the  Moors  reopened  the  mines 
in  Spain.  Mines  discovered  in  Saxony,  Harz  Moun- 
tains and  in  Austria.  Supply  of  precious  metals 
remained  about  stationery  until  the  discovery  of 
America. 

1257.    Gold  coins  first  introduced  in  England. 

1442.  Goncales  Baldeza  returned  from  a  voyage  to  West 
Africa,  and  brought  with  him  the  first  gold  from  the 
western  coast  of  that  continent. 


104  GOLD  AND  SILVER. 

1471.  The  silver  mines  at  Schneeberg,  Saxony,  were  first 
worked;  up  to  1500  the  yield  is  estimated  to  have 
been  more  than  160  tons  of  silver,  but  after  that  year 
the  output  decreased  rapidly. 

1492.  Discovery  of  America  by  Columbus,  whose  chief 
object  of  search  was  gold,  which  he  found  in  consid- 
erable quantity  among  the  natives  of  the  islands  he 
reached. 

1497.    In  Spain  the  ratio  was  10|  to  1. 

1516.  The  silver  mines  at  Joachimstahl,  Bohemia,  were 
in  flourishing  condition  at  the  beginning  of  the  six- 
teenth century.  In  1516  some  8,000  miners  were 
employed  there. 

1521.  Conquest  of  Mexico  by  Fernando  Cortes. 

1522.  The  first  silver  sent  to  Europe  from  the  mines  of 
Mexico  was  obtained  from  Tasco,  discovered  by  the 
Spaniards  this  year.    These  mines,  together  with 
those  of  Pachuca,  are  considered  the  oldest  in  Mexico, 
some  of  them  having  been  long  worked  by  the  Aztecs 
at  the  time  of  the  arrival  of  the  Spaniards. 

1527.  There  are  no  documents  to  show  when  silver- 
mining  was  first  begun  at  Przibram,  Bohemia,  but, 
according  to  the  municipal  records,  a  concession  to 
reopen  the  mines  was  granted  in  1527. 

1532.    Conquest  of  Peru  by  Francisco  Pizarro. 

1537.  Gold-mining  was  begun  by  the  Spaniards  in  New 
Granada  (Republic  of  Columbia). 

1540.  Work  was  begun  by  the  Spaniards  in  the  silver 
mines  of  Zacatecas,  Mexico. 

1545.  Discovery  of  the  famous  silver  mines  of  Potosi, 
Bolivia. 

1548.    First  discovery  of  silver  at  Guanajuato,  Mexico. 

1555.  The  silver  mines  at  Sombrerete,  Zacatecas,  Mexico, 
began  to  produce. 

1557.  Invention  of  the  patio  process  of  silver  amalgama- 
tion by  Bartolome  de  Medina,  of  Pachua,  Mexico. 

1571.  The  Huancevalica  quicksilver  mines  in  Peru  first 
began  to  produce  in  noteworthy  quantity.  This  was 
an  important  event,  as  an  abundant  supply  of  mer- 
cury for  the  amalgamation  of  Potosi  ore  was  thereby 
obtained. 

1574.    The  patio  process  was  introduced  in  Peru. 


GOLD  AND  SILVER.  105 

1575.    Discovery  of  the  silver  mines  of  Oruro,  Bolivia. 

1577.  The  placers  of  Brazil  were  first  discovered  this 
year,  but  they  were  not  actively  worked  until  1674, 
and  their  product  did  not  begin  to  be  important  un- 
til 1695. 

1590.  Invention  of  the  system  of  copper-pan  or  "cazo" 
amalgamation  by  Alonzo  Barba,  Potosi,  Bolivia. 

1609.  Holland  maintained  from  1609  to  1816  a  silver 
monetary  standard,  giving  gold  a  nominal  valuation 
at  a  ratio  14.7  to  1. 

1623.  Discovery  of  silver  at  Kongsberg,  Norway;  the 
works  at  that  place  were  established  the  same 
year. 

1630.  Discovery  of  the  famous  silver  mines  of  Cerro  de 
Pasco,  Peru. 

1632.  Discovery  of  the  silver  mines  of  Batopilas,  Chi- 
huahua, Mexico. 

1633.  Invention  of  the  aludel  furnace  for  the  reduction 
of  quicksilver,  by  L.  S.  Barba,  a  Peruvian;  this  was 
the  first  efficient  furnace  devised  for  this  purpose. 

1666.    Discovery  of  the  silver  mines  of  Cusihuiriachic, 

Chihuahua,  Mexico. 
1688.    Silver  was  the  legal  measure  of  value  in  Hamburg, 

a  city  of  extensive  commerce,  from  1688  until  recent 

times,  but  gold  was  also  coined  at  a  ratio  of  14|-  to  1. 
1695.    The  rich  placers  of  Minas  Geraes,  Brazil,  began  to 

produce  largely. 
1702.    Establishment  of  the  school  of  mines  at  Freiberg, 

Saxony. 
1704.    Discovery  of  the  silver  mines  at  Santa  Eulalia, 

Chihuahua,  Mexico. 
Discovery  of  silver  at  Nertschinsk,  Siberia,  and  the  first 

regular  mining  of  precious  metals  in  that  country  was 

begun. 
1710.    The  metallurgical  works  at  Freiberg,  Saxony,  was 

oegun. 
1717.    From  1717  to  1816,  the  legal  ratio  between  gold 

and  silver  in  England  wa£i  15i  to  1. 
1737.    Discovery  of  gold  near  Voitsk,  Government   of 

Archangel,  Russia. 
1745.    Important  discovery  of  gold-bearing  quartz  on  the 

Beriozofsk  River,  near  Ekaterinburg,  in  the  Ural> 


106  GOLD  AND  SILVER. 

Russia.  Gold-mining  was  also  commenced  on  Snake 
Mountain,  in  the  Altai  Range,  Siberia. 

1762.  Discovery  of  the  great  silver  bonanza  of  Real  del 
Monte,  Mexico. 

1771.  Discovery  of  the  rich  silver  mines  of  Hualgayo, 
Peru. 

1774.  The  first  placers  in  the  Ural  were  discovered  this 
year,  quartz  lodes  having  been  opened  nearly  thirty 
years  previous. 

1778.  The  silver  mines  of  Catorce,  Mexico,  were  opened 
and  proved  to  be  rich. 

1783.  Zambrano  discovered  the  famous  silver  mines  of 
Guarisamey,  Durango,  Mexico. 

1786.  Prior  to  the  Constitution  of  1789,  the  Congress  of 
the  American  States  had,  in  1786,  established  a  double 
monetary  standard  with  a  ratio  of  15}  to  1,  the  dollar 
having  been  established  as  the  monetary  unit  in  1785. 

1790.  Barrel  amalgamation  was  introduced  at  the  metal- 
lurgical works  at  Freiberg,  Saxony. 

1792.  The  famous  bonanza  at  Sombrerete,  Zacatecas, 
Mexico,  was  discovered  this  year,  the  mines  at  that 
place  having  been  worked  for  more  than  two  cen- 
turies. 

The  legal  ratio  between  gold  and  silver  in  the  United 
States  was  made  15  to  1,  by  the  act  of  Congress  cre- 
ating a  mint. 

1793.  Mules  and  horses  were  used  in  Mexico,  for  the 
first  time,  for  mixing  the  pulp,  mercury,  and  chem- 
icals in  the  patio  process  saving  75  per  cent  in  the  cost 
of  this  branch  of  working;   prior  to  this  time,  the 
operation  had  been  performed  entirely  by  human 
labor. 

1798.    Discovery  of  the  great  bonanza  (silver)  at  Ramos, 

Mexico. 
1803.    France  adopted  the  double  monetary  standard  at  a 

ratio  of  15 J  to  1;    previous  to  the  Revolution,  the 

ratio  between  gold  and  silver  in  that  country  had 

been  15  to  1. 
1805.    The  gold  mines  of  the  Ancosta  district,  Bolivia, 

commenced  to  yield. 
1810.    Discovery  of  silver  at  El  Refugio,  Chihuahua, 

Mexico. 


GOLD  AND  SILVER.  107 

1816.    Discovery  of  the  Melkowa  placers,  Siberia. 
England  adopted  the  gold  standard  by  act  of  Parliament 

of  this  year. 
Silver  was  the  sole  standard  in  Holland  until  this  year, 

when  the  double  standard  was  adopted  at  a  ratio  of 

15.873  to  1. 
1821.    Resumption  of  specie  payments  in  gold  by  the 

Bank  of  England. 
1824.    Discovery  of  silver   at    Palmarejo,    Chihuahua, 

Mexico. 
The  silver  mines  of  Fresnillo,  Zacatecas,  Mexico,  were 

opened. 

1829.  Discovery  of  gold  mines  in  Georgia;  first  mining 
excitement  in  the  United  States. 

1830.  Discovery  of  the  placers  of  the  Altai  Mountains, 
Siberia. 

Discovery  of  the  silver  mines  of  Guadalcanal,  Spain. 

1832.  The  silver  mines  of  Chanarcillo,  near  Copiapo, 
Chile,  were  opened. 

1834.  The  legal  ratio  betwen  gold  and  silver  in  the 
United  States  was  made  16  to  1. 

1837.  The  St.  John  del  Rey  Mining  Company,  operating 
the  Morro  Velho  gold  mine  in  Brazil,  commenced  to 
produce  largely. 

1839.  Count  Strzelecki  is  said  to  have  found  gold  in  New 
South  Wales  in  1839,  but  in  deference  to  the  wishes 
of  the  Governor,  Sir  G.  Phipps,  the  discovery  was 
kept  secret,  the  colony  being  then  a  penal  one.  In 
1841,  Rev.  W.  Clark  also  found  gold,  and  in  1847  he 
called  the  attention  of  the  colonists  to  the  auriferous 
character  of  the  country.  The  value  of  the  diggings 
was  not  realized,  however,  until  Hargreaves  made 
his  discovery  in  1851. 

1843.  The  Augustin  process  of  working  silver  ores  was 
introduced  at  the  Gottesbelohnung  Hutte,  near  Mans- 
feld,  Germany,  and  later  in  the  year  at  the  Freiberg 
works. 

Discovery  of  the  silver  mines  of  Hien  de  la  Encina,  in 
Guadalajara,  Spain. 

1847.  Holland  again  adopted  the  silver  standard. 

1848.  On  January  19,  Marshall  discovered  gold  at  Co- 
loma,  Cal.    This  find  started  the  rush  of  gold-seekers 


108  GOLD  AND  SILVER. 

to  the  Pacific  Coast,  and  by  the  end  of  the  year 
numerous  discoveries  of  the  precious  metal  had  been 
made  in  various  portions  of  the  State,  notably  along 
the  American  and  Feather  rivers. 

The  Ziervogel  process  for  treating  silver  ores  was  in- 
troduced at  Freiberg,  superseding  the  Augustin 
process. 

1849.  Discovery  of  gold  in  the  bed  of  the  Yuruari  River, 
Venezuela,  but  the  region  did  not  become  the  scene 
of  great  operations  until  several  years  later. 

Discovery  of  gold  in  Gold  Canon,  Nevada;  an  important 
event,  as  it  eventually  led  to  the.  discovery  of  the 
Comstock  lode. 

1850.  Belgium  adopted  the  single  silver  monetary  stand- 
ard. 

Quartz  mining  was  begun  in  California. 

1851.  Discovery  of  gold  in  New  South  Wales  by  Har- 
greaves. 

Discovery  of  gold  at  Ballarat  and  Bendigo,  in  Victoria, 
following  close  upon  the  discoveries  in  New  South 
Wales. 

Work  was  begun  at  the  quicksilver  mines  of  New  -Al- 
maden,  California. 

1852.  Discovery  of  gold  in  South  Australia  and  Tas- 
mania. 

Invention  of  the  process  of  hydraulic  mining  in  Cali- 
fornia by  Edward  E.  Mattison,  a  native  of  Connecti- 
cut. 

1857.  Discovery  of  gold  in  New  Zealand. 
Suspension  of  specie  payments  by  Russia. 

The  German  States,  including  Austria,  adopted  a  single 
silver  standard. 

1858.  Discovery  of  gold  at  Canoona,  Queensland. 

The  Patera  process  was  introduced  at  Joachims  thai,  Bo- 
hemia; the  use  of  sodium  hyposulphite  as  a  lixiviant 
for  silver  ores  having  been  first  suggested  by  Dr. 
Percy  in.l84S. 

1859.  The  Comstock  lode,  Nevada,  was  discovered  early 
in  the  year  by  O'Reilly  and  McLaughlin,  at  the  point 
where  the  Ophir  mine  is  located.  The  Grosh  brothers 
found  silver  in  this  vicinity  several  years  previous, 
but  their  discovery  carne  to  naught. 


GOLD  AND  SILVER.  109 

Discovery  of  gold  in  the  Fraser  River  region,  British 
Columbia. 

Pike's  Peak  excitement;  discovery  of  gold  placers  in  Gil- 
pin  County,  Colorado,  in  California  Gulch,  and  at 
Breckenridge. 

1860.  Invention  of  the  Washoe  process  of  pan  amalga- 
mation by  Almarin  B,  Paul  and  James  Smith. 

Discovery  of  the  Gould  &  Curry  and  Savage  bonanzas  in 

the  Comstock  lode. 

Discovery  of  the  placers  of  the  Boise  Basin  in  Idaho. 
After   seventeen   centuries  of  neglect   the  silver-lead 

mines   of  Laurium,   in    Greece,   were  reopened,  a 

French  company  having  obtained  a  concession  of 

the  property. 

1861.  Belgium  returned  to  the  double  monetary  stand- 
ard. 

Discovery  of  gold  in  Nova  Scotia. 
Discovery  of  rich  placers  in  Oregon. 

1862.  Suspension  of  specie  payments  by  the  United 
States. 

First  important  discoveries  of  gold  in  Montana. 
Discovery  of  silver  in  the  Reese  River  district,  Nevada. 

1863.  First  discoveries  of  argentiferous  lead  ores  in  Little 
Cotton  wood  Canon,  Utah. 

1864.  First  locations  at  Eureka,  Nevada,  but  no  im- 
portant  discoveries  (silver-lead)  were  made   until 
the   fall   of    1869.      Claims    were   also   located   at 
Pioche,    in   the  same  State,   though  operations  at 
that  place  did  not  become  successful  until  several 
years  later. 

Discovery  of  rich  placers  in  Last  Chance  Gulch,  Mon- 
tana; placers  were  also  located  at  Butte. 

Discovery  of  the  Yellow  Jacket-Kentuck-Crown  Point 
and  Belcher  bonanzas  in  the  Comstock  lode. 

1865.  Establishment  of  the  Latin  Union,  consisting  of 
France,  Italy,  Switzerland,  and  Belgium,  providing 
for  a  double  monetary  standard  at  a  ratio  of  15  J  to  1, 
the  agreement  to  hold  good  until  1880. 

Discovery  of  the  silver  lodes  at  Phillipsburg,  Deer  Lodge 
County,  Montana,  but  it  was  not  until  1881  that  the 
great  Granite  Mountain  mine  began  to  develop  into 
a  bonanza. 


110  GOLD  AND  SILVER. 

Discovery  of  the  Chollar-Potosi  bonanza  in  the  Comstock 
lode. 

1866.  Italy  suspended  specie  payments. 

Discovery  of  the  Overman-Segregated  Belcher-Caledonia 
and  Hale  &  Norcross  bonanzas  in  the  Comstock 
lode. 

Discovery  of  the  famous  El  Callao  mine,  Yuruari  district, 
Venezuela. 

1867.  First  international  monetary  conference  convened 
in  Paris  by  the  French  Government,  at  which  twenty 
nations,  comprising  all  the  important  countries  of 
Europe  and  America  were  represented. 

Discovery  of  rich  deposits  of  silver  ore  at  White  Pine, 
Nev.;  these  were  the  first  large  bodies  of  silver  ore 
found  in  a  limestone  formation  in  the  United  States, 
and  the  information  gained  from  them  led  directly 
to  the  discovery  of  the  silver-lead  deposits  of  Eureka 
soon  afterwards. 

The  smelting  works  of  the  Boston  &  Colorado  Smelting 
Company  were  established  at  Black  Hawk,  Colorado; 
this  was  an  important  step  for  the  development  of 
the  mines  of  Gilpin  County  and  other  districts  in 
Colorado. 

Discovery  of  the  Thames  gold-field  on  the  north  island  of 
New  Zealand. 

1868.  Greece  joined  the  Latin  Union. 

Piscovery  of  gold  in  Western  Australia,  but  it  was  not 

until  1887  that  any  diggings  of  importance  were 

found. 
The  Emma  silver  mine,  Little  Cotton  wood,  Utah,  was 

located  in  August  of  this  year,  but  no  large  shipments 

were  made  until  July,  1870. 
Discovery  of  the  Sierra  Nevada  bonanza  in  the  Comstock 

lode. 

1869.  Discovery  of  the  important  silver-lead  deposits  of 
Eureka,  Nevada.    The    American    practice   of  lead 
smelting  has  been  developed  chiefly  from  the  meth- 
ods adopted  in  this  district. 

The  Pacific  Railway  was  completed,  and  prospecting 
along  its  line  was  greatly  stimulated. 

The  Sutro  tunnel  to  open  the  Comstock  lode  was  com- 
menced Oct.  19, 


GOLD  AND  SILVER.  Ill 

Discovery  of  promising  deposits  of  silver  ore  at  Pioche, 

Nev. 
Copper  silver  ore  was  discovered  at  Butte,  Montana, 

and    a   smelting   furnace  *  erected    at   the    Parrott 

mine. 

1870.  Great  silver  deposits  were  discovered  at  Caracoles, 
about  120  miles  inland  in  the  desert  province  of 
Atacama,  Chile,  on  the  Bolivian  frontier. 

The  silver  mines  of  Eureka  and  Pioche,  Nevada,  became 
large  producers. 

1871.  The  German  Empire,  by  Act  of  Dec.  4,  assumed 
the  sovereign  right  of  coinage  and  adopted  the  gold 
standard;  the  mintage  of  silver  was  discontinued. 

Discovery  of  the  great  Crown  Point-Belcher  bonanza  in 

the  Comstock~lode. 
The  mines  of  Big  and  Little  Cotton  wood,  Utah,  made 

large  shipments. 

1872.  Discovery  of  silver  at  Georgetown,  New  Mexico. 
The  Ontario  vein  (silver),  Park  City,  Utah,  was  located 

June  19. 

1873.  The  United  States,  by  Act  of  Congress,  Feb.  12, 
discontinued  the  coinage  of  silver  'dollars.    This  Act 
did  not  demonetize  silver  in  words,  although  it  did 
BO  in  effect.    The  silver  dollar  is  not  named  in  it. 
Precisely  what  the  Act  did  was  to  authorize  the 
coinage  of   silver  half-dollars,  quarter-dollars,  and 
dimes  below  standard  weight,  and  of  a  new  silver 
coin  for  Asiatic  commerce,  of  standard  weight,  to  be 
called  the  "trade  dollar,"  and  to  prohibit  these  coins 

•  from  being  legal  tender  for  more  than  five  dollars  in 

any  one  payment. 
Discovery  of  the  "Big  Bonanza"  in  the  Consolidated 

California  &  Virginia  mines  on  the  Comstock  lode. 
The  German  Government,  by  Act  of  July  9,  provided 

for  the  retirement  of  its  silver  coins  and  the  sale  of 

the  bullion. 
By  a  Treasury  order,  Sept.  6,  France  limited  the  amount 

of  silver  to  be  accepted  by  its  mint. 

1874.  A  year  of  great  excitement  on  the  Comstock,  the 
"Big  Bonanza"  beginning  to. yield   largely,  while 
another  bonanza  was  discovered  in  the  Ophir  mine. 

Silver  was  demonetized  by  the  Scandinavian  States. 


112  GOLD  AND  S1L  VER. 

Discovery  of  promising  silver  mines,  including  the  Silver 
King,  in  the  Final  Range,  Arizona. 

Early  in  the  year  argentiferous  lead-carbonate  ore  was 
found  on  Iron  Hill,  Leadville,  and  the  Lime  and  Rock 
claims  were  located. 

By  an  agreement  made  in  January  of  this  year,  the  Latin 
Union  was  to  limit  the  coinage  of  silver,  exclusive  of 
subsidiary  coins,  to  the  following  sums  for  three 
years:  1874, 140,000,000  francs;  1875, 150,000,000  francs; 
1876,  108,000,000  francs.  Any  nation  in  the  Union  had 
the  right  to  decline  coining  its  quota  of  this  amount 
any  year. 

1875.  Holland,  by  Act  of  June  6,  suspended  mintage  of 
silver  for  private  account,  and  established  gold  coin- 
age with  unlimited  legal-tender  functions,  with  a 
ratio  of  15.604  to  1;  this  was  a  provisional  law,  to  last 
only  until  Jan.  1, 1877. 

Switzerland  declined  to  coin  its  quota  of  silver  assigned 
by  the  agreement  of  the  Latin  Union. 

1876.  First  shipments  of  silver-lead  ore  from  Leadville, 
Colo. 

Discovery  of  silver-lead  ore  at  Frisco,  Utah,  and  the 
Horn  Silver  mine  was  opened  this  year. 

In  July  was  brought  the  first  suit  of  the  farmers  in  Cali- 
fornia against  hydraulic  miners,  and  from  this  time 
the  debris  question  became  a  burning  subject  of  dis- 
cussion. 

The  gold  fields  of  Black  Hills,  Dakota,  began  to  attract 
much  attention. 

Discovery  of  the  Drumlummon  ledge  (gold)  at  Marys- 
yille,  Mont. 

Belgium  suspended  the  coinage  of  silver. 

France  discontinued  the  mintage  of  silver,  except  for 
subsidiary  coins,  until  January,  1878,  by  Proclama- 
tion of  the  President,  in  accordance  with  the  Act  of 
August  5,  1876. 

A  royal  decree  was  issued  in  Spain  interdicting  the  coin- 
age of  silver  except  pn  Government  account,  and  de- 
claring it  to  be  the  intention  of  the  Government  to 
limit  the  legal-tender  function  of  silver  to  150  pesetas 
(about  $30)  after  it  had  obtained  a  sufficient  amount 
of  gold  to  make  this  step  practicable. 


GOLD  AND  SILVER.  113 

Russia  suspended  the  coinage  of  silver  for  individuals, 

excepting  the  amount  of  silver  money  needed  for 

trade  with  China. 
By  Act  of  Congress  of  the  United  States,  August  15,  a 

silver  commission  was  created  which  reported  on 

March  2,  1877. 

1877.  Discovery  of  rich  silver  veins   at   Silver   Cliff, 
Colorado,  including  the  Bassick  and  Bull-Domingo 
mines. 

The  curious  argentiferous  sandstone  deposits  of  Silver 
Reef,  Washington  County,  Utah,  had  been  known 
since  1871,  and  a  mining  district  was  organized  there 
in  1874,  but  the  mines  did  not  commence  to  produce 
until  1876. 

1878.  On  Feb.  28,  the  Congress  of  the  United  States 
passed  an  Act  ordaining  the  coinage  ($2,000,000  per 
month  at  least,  $4,000,000  at  most)  on  Government 
account  of  silver  dollars  of  412J  grains,  900  fine,  and 
and  made  them  full  legal  tender  except  where  ex- 
pressly stipulated  otherwise  by  contract. 

An  international  monetary  conference  was  held  in  Au- 
gust at  Paris. 

Great  excitement  at  Leadville,  Colo.,  where  many  new 
discoveries  were  made. 

The  first  locations  at  Tombstone,  Ariz.,  were  filed  and 
the  next  year  the  mines  (silver)  there  commenced  to 
produce  largely. 

Discovery  of  the  silver-lead  deposits  of  Sierra  Mojada, 
Coahuila,  Mexico. 

1879.  The  German  Government  discontinued  it  sales  of 
silver  on  May  16. 

Resumption  of  specie  payments  by  the  United  States. 

Discovery  of  promising  veins  of  silver  ore  at  Aspen, 
Colo.,  and  in  the  San  Juan  region  in  the  southwest- 
ern part  of  the  same  State. 

1880.  Reported  existence  of  promising  gold  reins  in  the 
Colar  fields  of  Mysore,  Southern  India,  which  were 
subsequently  opened  and  became  large  producers. 

1881.  Discovery  of  silver  ore   at   Lake   Valley,  New 
Mexico. 

First  important  discoveries  of  silver  ore  in  the  Calico 
district,  California. 


114  GOLD  AND  SILVER. 

1882.  Decision  of  the  courts  prohibiting  hydraulic  min- 
ing in  the  valleys  of  navigable  rivers  of  California. 

1883.  The  Mount  Morgan  gold  mine,  at  Bockhampton, 
Queensland,  began  to  produce. 

The  Broken  Hill  mine  (silver-lead)  in  New  South  Wales, 
Australia,  was  discovered  in  September. 

1884.  Discovery  of  gold  in  de  Kaap  district  of  the  Trans- 
vaal, South  Africa. 

1885.  Discovery  of  the  silver-lead  deposits  of  the  Cceur 
d'Alene  region,  Idaho. 

The  first  important  discoveries  in  the  "banket"  forma- 
tion, Witwatersrand,  Transvaal,  South  Africa,  were 
made  during  this  year,  but  active  operations  were 
not  commenced  until  1887. 

1890.  Act  of  Congress,  July  14,  repealing  the  law  of  1878 
and  providing  for  the  purchase  of  4,500,000  ounces  of 
silver  monthly,  against  which  certificates  are  issued, 
redeemable  in  either  gold  or  silver. 

Establishment  of  the  silver-lead  smelting  industry  in 
Mexico. 

1891.  The  gold  fields  of  Mashonaland,  South  Africa,  b •»• 
gan  to  attract  attention. 

Large  exports  of  gold  from  New  York  and  purchases  by 
Kussia. 

Discovery  of  silver  ore  at  Creede,  Colo.,  and  gold  at 
Cripple  Creek,  in  the  same  State. 

Austro-Hungary  adopted  the  gold  monetary  standard. 

Third  international  monetary  conference  held  in  Brus- 
sels on  invitation  of  the  United  States,  adjourning  in 
December  without  result. 

At  the  close  of  the  year  large  exports  of  gold  from  the 
United  States,  causing  a  very  unsettled  feeling  in 
financial  affairs. 

1893.    India  ceased  coining  silver. 

Financial  panic  in  the  U.  S.,  due  to  the  large  purchases 
of  silver  and  the  consequent  fear  that  the  U.  S.  would 
be  forced  to  a  silver  basis.  Act  of  1890  repealed. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

T23Bffi3ffi5Kr 

diate  recall. 


LD2lA-60m-2,'67 
(H241slO)476B 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


Sound  Money 

by  J.  A.  Fraser  Jr.  and  Charles  H.  Sergei. 

Paper,          25  cts.,  Lh,        $1.00. 

Well  written,  very  well  written:  boy  on  d  comparison  the  best 
book  that  has  appeared  on  the  subject.  J.  1  avrence  Laughlhi, 

Professor  of  Political  Economy 
in  University  of  Chicago. 

I  am  glad  you  have  answered  "Coin's  Financial  School"--which 
^ou  have  done  successfully. —  John  Sherman. 

Much  the  best  popular  publication  that  has  yet  appeared  in  re- 
ply to  "Coin"  is  a  book  entitled  "Sound  Money".  The  book  declares 
itself  to  be  a  complete  exposure  of  the  forged  and  falsified  statistics 
in  "Coin's  Financial  School".  It  certainly  does  demolish  the  little 
financier  in  fine  style,  taking  up  his  statements  one  by  one  and  show- 
ing their  falsity.  The  book  is  well  illustrated.  It  is  well,  worthy  a 
sareful  perusal  by  not  only  the  casual  reader,  but  also  the  student 
jf  finance.  —  The  Economist. 

Published  by 

Charges  II.  Sergei  Company, 

358  Dearborn  St., 

CHICAGO  . 


